FYI

I will keep you posted on the progress....



---------------------- Forwarded by Philippe A Bibi/HOU/ECT on 01/16/2001 
08:26 AM ---------------------------


Mark Pickering
01/15/2001 03:26 AM
To: John Sherriff/LON/ECT@ECT
cc: Philippe A Bibi/HOU/ECT@ECT, Michael R Brown/LON/ECT@ECT 
Subject: Network

Hi John,

I assume you spoke with Nigel following your voicemail on Friday and he has 
brought you up to date.

We are doing everything we can to make fix this problem, and we are trying to 
ensure everyone is in the loop.

The problem looks to be a software bug somewhere in the Cisco operating 
environment. This has been escalated to Cicso's highest priority and we have 
had up to 6 Cisco engineers working on the problem. We have also flown in one 
on the Houston Netwrok team to assist. The problem we have is that the two 
core 6500 routers, which are at the hub of the network will run along 
perfectly at about 7% utilization, then, for an as yet undetermined reason 
they suddenly jump to 99% and start thrashing, dropping network connectivity. 

The catch 22 we have is that when the system goes down, the Cicso guys need 
time to capture diagnostic information, but of course we just need to get it 
up again straight away.

The team have systematically gone though each hardware component and each 
software component to ensure all are working, all are at the latest cisco 
recomended release level and all are required. Those not needed are removed 
to ensure the 'simplest' environment possible.

The bottom line is that we still haven't solved the problem, but are doing 
everything in our power to resolve it ASAP.

Regards
MRP

fyi, we have been working on a network redesign since before these problems 
start which will distribute the network across more Core routers, (in effect 
seperate networks). This design is the same as that proposed for the new 
Houston building. Whatever design is in place, however, we can never rule out 
a problem due to faulty software such as this.