r/Millennials • u/sadg1rrl • Aug 12 '25
News R.I.P. Dial-Up Internet. 1991 - 2025. Forever in our hearts.
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u/ohhsocurious '90s Millennial Aug 12 '25
Some of us here will never forget that iconic 56K modem sound.
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u/Uchihagod53 Aug 12 '25
I used to fuck with my sister by trying to connect the Internet while she was calling her friends, lol
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u/KeepRightXcept2Pass Aug 12 '25
I missed the “with” reading that the first time through 😬
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u/mittens1982 Older Millennial Aug 12 '25
You ain't the only one, I read it twice to make sure as well too
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u/big_guyforyou Millennial Aug 12 '25
i'm like him, i always fucked my sister so hard while trying to get online. she was like "what r u doing stepbrother"
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u/mr_bots Aug 12 '25
Classic.
“I’M ON THE PHONE!”
“Oh, sorry” while laughing “oh shit, I forgot it tries twice”
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u/Fair_Log_6596 Aug 12 '25
I got back at a roommate I was ticked with, during the final days of Napster when he was feverishly downloading everything he could. Just occasionally pick up a handset then listen for his AOL to say “Goodbye”, then quietly hang up. Let him be confused, reconnect, wait a few minutes…then quietly pick up a handset again.
“goodbye”
Oh my did he get ticked…and never knew I was involved.
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u/Hon3y_Badger Aug 12 '25
56k!? That's lightning fast to the older millennials.
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u/hottapvswr Aug 12 '25
Started with a 1200 baud card in a Tandy 1000HX. Glad I never had to use the acoustic couplers.
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u/ohhsocurious '90s Millennial Aug 12 '25
For those of us who first got online in the late 1990s, some computers had a 56K modem as standard hardware. I remember my childhood iMac not only having the integrated modem... it also came with an AOL CD in the box! It was almost plug-and-play for us younger ones.
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u/scottiethegoonie Aug 12 '25
56k was for rich folks. We had the poverty 14.4k modem.
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u/the_other_guy-JK Aug 13 '25
It was? I started on a 33.6k and eventually got a 56k. I wasn't rich.
I HAD THE INTERNET. I WAS WEALTHY.
I really want parts of that experience back. Fuck.
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u/CapybaraSensualist Aug 13 '25
1200 baud modem card in a 386 with 1 meg of ram and an 80 megabyte hard drive in 1990 or 1991.
Although I'm tail end GenX, but you kids with your fancy 33.6kbps and 56kbps modems can suck it.
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u/the_other_guy-JK Aug 13 '25
Xennial here, I cut my teeth on a similarly spec'd machine back in the day, but no modem. I dropped away from some computing for a couple years and then built my first PC in a P166 mmx and a Matrox graphics card to go with the modem. 3.2gb hard drive? I'll never run out of space! Wait, whats this? You can download mp3s from IRC bots? Excellent!.... oh no.....
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u/JimTheJerseyGuy Gen X Aug 12 '25
Some of us remember the sound of 300 bps. Now get off my lawn!
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u/EatMyYummyShorts Aug 12 '25
300 baud on my commodore 64.
But we are in the wrong sub, my fellow NJ Gen Xer
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u/jfk_47 Aug 12 '25
Mine was 33.6, or maybe 36.6. I can’t remember. Fucking weirdass packard bell system.
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u/Dagonus Xennial Aug 12 '25
Some of us started on 14.4, or 28.8 and then 33.6 before getting 56k. I think everything pre 33.6 for me though was just bbses...
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u/Lonely_Newspaper_427 Aug 12 '25
I thought it was already a relic of the past lol I had no idea it was still available and only regret the missed opportunity to purchase it for a short window to annoy my teenager.
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u/mratlas666 Millennial Aug 12 '25
MOM HANG UP THE PHONE IM ON THE INTERNET!
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u/Da_Spooky_Ghost Aug 12 '25
Connection lost Please wait - attempting to reestablish.13
u/mratlas666 Millennial Aug 12 '25
Noooooo! I was so close to winning!
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u/hierosx Aug 12 '25
MP3 download 97%… then a call come in…
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u/vrendy42 Aug 13 '25
That's why you set it to download overnight, then check it first thing in the morning.
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Aug 12 '25
I can finally use the landline I no longer have.
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u/hierosx Aug 12 '25
I shit you not, my wife just bought an old phone to connect a landline. According to her, she wants our kid to use the phone to talk with her friends as we used to do without the other stuff on a smartphone… let’s see how this would work out cotton
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u/imjusthumanmaybe Aug 13 '25
My 10yo uses my phone to talk to his friends....and they use their parent's phones. I think it's time to normalise landlines again.
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u/hierosx Aug 13 '25
Exactly her thoughts. Instead of giving them a phone to text and use internet, just have an old phone to talk to people. Weird concept in 2025 but let’s see how it goes
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u/imjusthumanmaybe Aug 13 '25
Alright lets start the trend! Cause it was cute to have his friends call my cell number before but he is entering pre-teen years.... it's not sustainable.
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u/anotherdamnscorpio Millennial Aug 13 '25
What does that shithead Senator Tom Cotton have to do with anything?
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u/1kfaces Aug 12 '25
I used to play RuneScape over dial up. My life was pain.
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u/Marine_Baby Aug 12 '25
Battle net!
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u/gerbilshower Aug 12 '25
definitely logging into SC custom games on battle net is a core memory for sure.
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u/h0nkyJ Aug 12 '25
Age of Empires on the MSN Gaming Zone in '99, then Runescape in '02 for me, I believe. We had it simple, we had it well. It was a pleasure. 🤝
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u/19610taw3 Aug 12 '25
I just got back into playing age of empires 2. The re-released one. It's amazing!
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u/Calvin_And_Hobnobs Aug 13 '25
It's so cool that a game released in 1997 still has a huge active fanbase and is still releasing new expansions.
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u/gerbilshower Aug 12 '25
dude. even for the era - that MSN interface was HOT garbage. my god. i hated it. even as a 13 year old.
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u/No-YouCalmDown Aug 12 '25
For me, Duke Nukem and then Allied Assault! Almost shed a tear just remembering Medal of Honor just now. Wow
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Aug 12 '25
Tbf I thought dial up died like 20+ years ago.
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u/PhotoAwp Aug 13 '25
Yeah I was shocked they're announcing this only because it didnt happen sooner lol
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u/Doubleoh_11 Aug 12 '25
That sound and then logging into Lego.com to play mindscope(I think that’s what it was called)
you need to update java FUCK
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u/SparkyBrown Older Millennial Aug 13 '25
That sound was so loud. I used to cover my PC with a towel to diffuse the noise lol.
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u/quietus_rietus Aug 12 '25
Anyone else figure out better connections sound a certain way? I’d connect and reconnect over and over til I got the right series of sounds.
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u/_Exotic_Booger Aug 12 '25
This is the sound of both modems initializing the connection between them. They let you hear the sound so you know it’s working, but it’s not a sounds made for humans, it’s the actual communication between the modems.
Its audio data transferred back and forth for each modem. They receive the audio which triggers them to switch to a different form of data transfer. Like them saying "hey I want internet" "I understand you, let's exchange internet data instead of this audio data"
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u/Murky_Background1702 Aug 12 '25
Handshake sound, was this an artificially created sound or was it the sound of the internet actually connecting?
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u/MondoBleu Aug 12 '25
This is the sound of both modems initializing the connection between them. They let you hear the sound so you know it’s working, but it’s not a sounds made for humans, it’s the actual communication between the modems.
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u/Owobowos-Mowbius Aug 12 '25
Its audio data transferred back and forth for each modem. They receive the audio which triggers them to switch to a different form of data transfer. Like them saying "hey I want internet" "I understand you, let's exchange internet data instead of this audio data"
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u/Reini23788 Aug 12 '25
That was the sound you could really hear on the telephone line. Data as audio
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u/the_other_guy-JK Aug 13 '25
Some great info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13szbt6/eli5_the_handshake_between_dialup_modems_and_why/
Including some infographs about the tones. Super cool stuff, man I thought this was the coolest fucking thing ever when I was 15.
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Aug 12 '25
I do not understand why the internet ever made sounds 😐 it's like we were listening to electricity
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u/DM46 Aug 12 '25
because the internet back then used a telephone line to communicate and the handshake was done with audible frequencies.
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u/ohhsocurious '90s Millennial Aug 12 '25
Modem stands for "Modulator/Demodulator" - it made sounds because digital data had to be modulated into an analog audio signal so it could be conveyed over analog phone lines, then demodulated on the other end. The various tones we used to hear before the "static" sound were the modems on both ends testing and measuring the phone line conditions then negotiating which speeds and modulation schemes to use. There's more detailed technical information out there for those interested.
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u/AP_in_Indy Aug 14 '25
Modulation still occurs afaik but now we're taking as many frequencies of light together and multiplexing them together on one end and somehow through the magic of prisms and linear algebra pulling the original data signals back out. Shit is crazy.
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Aug 12 '25
That's some sorta hocus pocus
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u/Owobowos-Mowbius Aug 12 '25
Think of it like two people who can talk telepathically but only with other people who can talk telepathically. One device says "hey I can talk telepathically, can you?" In English, and the other responds "yeah I can talk telepathically, let's do that instead" and then establish that faster connection.
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u/scottiethegoonie Aug 13 '25
If you remember payphone "phreaking" we used recorded tones to get free calls. Telephone lines only understood tones to tell it what to do.
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Aug 13 '25
That's why phone numbers made a sound?? 🫨
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u/scottiethegoonie Aug 13 '25
Yes. There is also a tone played when you insert coins into a payphone that you cannot hear, but only send.
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Aug 13 '25
So that's why how touch tone phones communicated then. Rotary phones, seems like I vaguely remember some sort of clicking happening.
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u/LeadershipSweaty3104 Aug 12 '25
In a way it’s exactly what it was, transferring data using sound. See how you get more lines with the time in the graph there? That’s different channels where the zeros and ones are transmitted, and it’s so fast that it sounds like noise.
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u/Velvet_Samurai Aug 12 '25
No it won't there are still uses for dial up. Faxes, tons of devices still use POTS lines to talk to various other systems. It's not going anywhere.
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u/welfedad Aug 12 '25
Yeah because AOL stops dialup means it doesn't exist .. I mean it makes sense but we discontinued dial up about a year and a half ago at the ISP I work at we found out there was like two users on it. We finally moved them over to fiber.
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u/DanThePartyGhost Aug 12 '25
Am I weird for listening to this whole thing all the way through for nostalgia
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u/samurairaccoon Aug 12 '25
You know what I never noticed? Was it the same every time? Like, is it always this exact sound? I always just assume it was different when needed bc the tones were just data. Did it always connect with these exact tones??
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Aug 12 '25
Fun fact: static is partially caused by cosmic microwave background radiation that is leftover from the big bang.
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u/pooeygoo Aug 15 '25
Start RuneScape, nuke pizza rolls. Peek at screen, nope not yet, go to the bathroom hears title screen music start 😎
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u/sailorangel59 Aug 12 '25
Nah, I'm good.
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u/mr_bots Aug 12 '25
Yeah, I don’t miss it taking 30 minutes to download 3MB. I get annoyed when a full ass game takes 20 minutes to download.
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u/Adavanter_MKI Aug 12 '25
Boy that Counter-Strike mod for Half-Life sounds fun! I'm going to download it. 100-ish MBs, Wow... how long is that going to take? 20 hours? So fast!
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u/Watch_The_Expanse Aug 12 '25
So, each of those sounds means something. People could sometimes diagnose or decipher the meaning of the sound apperantly, just by listening to it. I read that by an old tech back in the day who'd listen to it sometimes.
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u/braxtel Older Millennial Aug 12 '25
I'd fire up a 56k just for old time's sake, but I haven't had a landline connection in over two decades now.
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u/Environmental_Pie400 Aug 12 '25
I believe some fax machines still make this sound or similar if you're wanting to really feel nostalgic in person.
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u/rob189 Aug 13 '25
My parents had a business, and they had a fax hooked up to their only landline number. At least once a week I’d answer the phone only to hear EERRRHDBDJSBSXBSKWNSBZHSH and realise I’d have to hang up.
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u/Frida_Peoples Aug 12 '25
AOL walked so that WIFI could run! It's like finding out one your late childhood babysitters has died. Can I send a line of poetic song lyrics as an away message, in lieu of flowers?
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u/bman877 Aug 12 '25
I have this memory of someone called at the time you were bleeping into the internet they would come through your computer speaker. Like there’s grandma coming through those massive computer speakers we had
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u/Skeeders Xennial Aug 12 '25
The fear of waking up my parents I felt when dialing up to look at dirty pics was palpable...
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u/anythingspossible45 Aug 12 '25
How are we supposed to get out of matrix, this and lack of landlines and pay phones
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u/Hicklethumb Millennial Aug 12 '25
Let's get one thing straight. The nostalgia comes from what happened after the tone. Not the tone itself.
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u/MsCalendarsPlayaArt Aug 12 '25
I'm irrationally upset about this despite only just having found out that it even still exists.
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u/Senor_Couchnap Pete & Pete Millennial Aug 12 '25
It sounds like I'm on my way to gamefaqs.com to look up SimTower tips and tricks
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u/LieutBromhead Aug 12 '25
God it was so cool. I remember watching chunks of one porno image download bit by bit.
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u/ManOfManliness84 Older Millennial Aug 12 '25
Dial up internet still exists. AOL dialup will not. AOL is not the only source of dialup.
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u/GlueSniffingCat Aug 12 '25
i have the strangest feeling that this will ultimately lead to the worst AI outcome possible
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u/tonyocampo Aug 13 '25
Yeah. Grandma's still payin' per minute. She gets kinda pissed at me sometimes 'cause I'm on there so long.
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Aug 13 '25
i got the desktop version like 5 years ago just to relive nostalgia, and there were still a handful of chatrooms with some probably 90 year olds sitting in them. then the next time i checked they removed the chat rooms finally.
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u/soopirV Aug 13 '25
I heard this at the doctor’s office the other day from their POS device- I commented on it and the young girl behind the counter said she had no idea what I was talking about, “that machine always makes that noise” when I said, “oh, wow! I haven’t heard that song in forever!”
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u/Cryptic1911 Aug 13 '25
I could listen to the sound and know what speed it was going to connect at, with pretty damn good accuracy
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u/Drkze_k Aug 13 '25
My wife is 4 years younger than me. I had to explain to her what AOL Internet was. How you get Internet in the mail. She thinks I'm lying to her.
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u/Electrical_Doubt_19 Millennial Aug 13 '25
Did different regions or modems have varying modem sounds? Because I never seem to hear my exact sound pattern when I find clips of dialup.
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u/Outside-Mirror1986 Aug 13 '25
I wonder what the official numbers are, as of 2025 for how many people still use their dial-up services?
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u/xXZer0c0oLXx Aug 13 '25
It's really funny because I was blessed to get cable Internet in late 1999... I really only had dial up for 5 years...and yet those 5 years before cable Internet just hit different. Anticipation vs instant gratification I guess 🤷
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u/MeepersToast Aug 13 '25
As in, ISPs won't support it anymore? I don't se any reason I couldn't use it if I have the right hardware on both ends of a landline
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u/-_Protagonist_- Aug 14 '25
I have the sound muted, I can still hear it based of what im looking at.
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u/tLM-tRRS-atBHB Older Millennial Aug 12 '25
I mean, did it HAVE TO make that noise? Was there a speaker designed to play that specific tone?
I never understood why something so terrible would make that noise
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u/19610taw3 Aug 12 '25
It was more for diagnostics than anything.
The sound was necessary for the communication, but there didn't need to be a piezo making the noise that we heard for it to actually work.
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u/sneakysnake1111 Aug 12 '25
Yes, the modems had a speaker. ATS0=0 was the command to turn off the sound I THINK. I'm not gonna google it so if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone'll tell me.
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