Juniper Networks, Inc. Individual When there is a change in network topology either due to a link going down or due to a new link addition, all the nodes in the network need to get the complete view of the network and re-compute the routes. There will generally be a small time window when the forwarding state of each of the nodes is not synchronized. This can result in transient loops in the network, leading to dropped traffic due to over-subscription of links. Micro-looping is generally more harmful than simply dropping traffic on failed links, because it can cause control traffic to be dropped on an otherwise healthy link involved in micro-loop. This can lead to cascading adjacency failures or network meltdown.