I think you'll find that people mean the BGP protocol when they say the internet routes around damage. While this is true, it doesn't route around firewalls for

I think you'll find that people mean the BGP protocol when they say the internet routes around damage. While this is true, it doesn't route around firewalls forcibly installed around a country by it's government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol Also, I'd contend this is not really true in practice. While BGP does repair some faults, what happens in reality is that ISP engineers route around damage. BGP itself might keep reachability intact, but any error will still lead to massive capacity loss. This is then repaired by NOCs around the world. That's what really keeps the internet rolling.