The original purpose of the internet was supposed to be a network that the government could continue to use even after a nuclear attack. The whole point is that it's supposed to figure out ways to route around damage. However, when it came to Internet2, apparently designers didn't pay as much attention to that kind of stability. The news today is that a homeless man in Boston tossed a cigarette on a mattress, setting off a two-alarm fire that happened to
knock out the Internet2 connection between New York and Boston. It's true that Internet2 is supposed to be experimenting with different methods of building network infrastructure, but you would think that redundancy would have been considered a feature worth keeping.
Link to Original Source