You are a network administrator for a medium$-$sized company. One morning, you receive reports of significantly slowed network performance and intermittent network outages.

Upon checking the network monitoring tools, you notice that the network utilization is at near maximum capacity, and the CPU utilization on several switches has spiked to over $80\%.$ You suspect a broadcast storm caused by a network loop might be the issue.

Before taking any action, you decide to investigate further. Which of the following steps should you take first to address the problem?

###answer###

Increase the bandwidth of the affected network segments to handle the increased traffic.

Immediately replace all switches with higher performance models to manage the load better.

Inspect the network topology and look for recent changes or additions that might have introduced a loop.

Shut down the entire network to prevent any potential damage to network devices.