Page 187 - CISSO_Prep_ Guide

Mesh and Partial Mesh Networks
The internet is a partial mesh network. It was designed to be
tolerant to the loss of a portion of the network so that even if a
major city or region that lay in the middle of the network was
cut off, communications would still be possible through other
routes. This fault tolerance is possible because many of the
primary internet systems are linked to several other systems
through multiple links. The failure of one node or portion of the
network will affect traffic in that location, but the rest of the
network will still be able to communicate.