Which doc are you referring? We used a DHT in early days but that was long before the launch. Maybe I oversaw to update at some place... There are 4 seed nodes

Which doc are you referring? We used a DHT in early days but that was long before the launch. Maybe I oversaw to update at some place... There are 4 seed nodes to which you connect randomly at startup. They deliver you all known onion addresses in the network. From that list you select randomly peers until u have 8 connections. You also maintain your local peer list which will be used at follow up startups. I don't see a way how to partition the network. You get random incoming connections as well (e.g. if one takes your offer). The floodfill network architecture is very robust against eclipse attacks (dht problems) and partitioning. Thats why a floodfill architecture is used on Bitcoin as well.