A day after America Online (AOL) announced that it reached its 10 million member mark, the online giant suffered a brief network and email outage. AOL had to take down its system from 6 to 7 a.m. PT today after the email system crashed, spokesman Rich D'Amato said. Email remained down for a few hours, but the system appeared to be fully functional by 9:45 a.m. The crash was caused by a "hardware problem with an email server," D'Amato said, and was related to the email outages AOL experienced in the last month. (See related story) "What happened this morning is not unlike the problem that hit us at the end of October," he said. "We do understand what the problem is and are working with the vendor on a permanent fix that will be installed in two weeks." AOL would not reveal the name of the company that supplies its email servers. D'Amato said the fix will be an "operating-level solution" that will allow AOL to isolate and fix independent servers "without impacting other equipment."