ORking> (By analogy with catastrophic failure of a nuclear reactOR) An event that causes saturation, OR near saturation, of a netwORk. NetwORk meltdown usually results from illegal OR misrouted packets (see Chernobyl packet) and typically lasts only a shORt time. It may also be caused by a hardware fault. It is the netwORk equivalent of thrashing. [Jargon File] (2004-02-17)