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Last but not least, some field problems with appliances occur because
of software and hardware faults. Unlike the other causes of field
problems discussed above, faults are the result of some bug in the
system's implementation, and usually result in system down-time. For a
mature system made by a technically sound organization, the number of
field disruptions due to faults should be very small.
Field problems due to faults are not discussed further in this
paper. The techniques that we describe in this paper to enable easy
debugging of field problems may have some applicability to diagnosing
certain types of field disruptions due to faults, but in this paper we
restrict our focus to diagnosing configuration and capacity problems.
Gaurav Banga
2000-04-24