The ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency NETwork) was the beginning of the Internet; a network of four computers which was put together by the U.S. Department of Defence in 1969. On the 27th of October, 1980 there was an unusual occurrence within ARPANET. For several hours the network appeared to be unstable, due to a high priority processes that was executing to the detriment of the system. It later expanded to a faster and more public network called NSFNET (Network Science Foundation Network) This network then grew into the internet as we know it today. On October 27th, 1980 the ARPAnet crashed for several hours, due to high priority processes that were executing exhausting system resources and causing down time within the system. (Rosen, 1981)
With today’s network management tools the system failure could have been avoided. Network manager responsibilities such as planning, organizing, directing, controlling and staffing (Dennis, 2002) would have allowed the situation to be handled correctly had these tools been available. The case study RFC789 by Rosen summarises that the main problems the managers experienced were the initial detection that a problem existed and the control of the problematic software/hardware. Assuming they were available, the managing responsibilities would have allowed for a much quicker and efficient recovery of the system. However if careful planning and organising had been carried out when the system was implemented the crash might have been avoided completely.