Any portal can become disconnected from other portals do to a network link failure or other problem. If a portal loses connection to it's locally assigned central hub, it will fallback to the nearest backbone hub. An orphaned and/or severed portal will continue to monitor the network and perform it's duties until the network is restored.

When doing an AutoNOC version upgrade, this also applies, as two portals running different versions of the software will not talk with each other until they are the same version.

The ability of a management platform to continue to function during network problems is a key benefit of AutoNOC. When the network doesn't work, most centralized solutions will break, whereas AutoNOC will keep on humming!