HASCS eventually reinstalled the old software on the core switch, stabilizing the network.
Osterberg said the main focus of the team trying to fix the problems yesterday was to get the network back up, not to determine what went wrong.
"Our priority is to get it working now," he said last night. "We'll figure out what happened tomorrow."
David M. Sobel, manager of user services at HASCS, said such a network interruption was unusual.
"This was very unprecedented. We were all kind of shocked," he said. "For the most part we're very pleased with the reliability of the network. This is the exception, not the rule."
Steen agreed. "People take the network systems for granted because they're so reliable."
The new software that caused the problem was part of a major upgrade program underway at HASCS to make the network faster and safer.
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