CAUSE: On Thursday, July 05, 2001 at approximately 11:40 AM CT, CME experienced a network outage caused by an internal switching fabric failure, which resulted in a loss of connectivity to some users. This loss of connectivity resulted in users seeing orders in a waiting state when in fact most of those orders were being sent to the Host, but no acknowledgements were received.

RESPONSE: Emergency e-mails, voice mails, and SPI mails were sent, and updated when appropriate. Senior staff was notified and operation staff began the process of restoring service to all users. Due to the wide spread effects of the outage, CME interrupted trading in all GLOBEX�2 markets at 12:20 PM CT. After verifying that all systems were responding as expected, the markets were placed back into a pre-opening state by 1:00 PM CT, with Currencies and Interest rate opening at 1:25 PM CT, and Equities opening at 1:30 PM CT.

RESOLUTION: Network and development specialists will investigate this failure to determine the exact nature of its cause, and will then make a recommendation to senior staff on a permanent solution.

If you have any questions, please call the GCC at 312-456-2391 option 2.