Version 13 Quirk

We setup a new system yesterday from the distro version 10.13.66. As we were activating it it went offline. Could not connect to it. plugged a monitor and keyboard and set the IP so we could get into it. When we went to Sysadmin/network settings there were NO entries at all and the unconfigured box was active and the start on boot was disabled. We thought that this was a fluke, unti we had a system in St Louis MO. do the same thing after a guy had been programming it all day long. Anyone know what is going on? Or has anyone else seen this??