The thing is, each ethernet cable is a temporal partition. By adding more ethernet cables you're not making partitions less likely, you're making more of them.

The thing is, each ethernet cable is a temporal partition. By adding more ethernet cables you're not making partitions less likely, you're making more of them. A distributed system is considered partitioned while the packets are in flight and have not yet reached their destination and come back with a response. This is true even if the system on the other side has not yet failed or the network equipment is functioning properly.