I think the Internet is doing pretty well save some IOS code problems from time to time, and the typical root server hicups.
I'm interested to know what you mean by "typical root server hicups". I'm trying to think of an incident which left the Internet generally unable to receive answers to queries on the root zone, but I can't think of one.
There have been several incidents in which some root servers have hiccuped, sometimes being down for several days. But since the service they provide has N+12 resiliency, the service itself has never been unavailable. Similarly, the Internet has always had N+1 or better vendor resiliency so IOS can have problems while the non-IOS vendor (or vendors) keep on running. In fact, I would argue that N+1 vendor resiliency is a good thing for you to implement in your network and N+2 vendor resiliency is a good thing for the Internet as a whole. Let's hope that vendor P manages to get some critical mass in the market along with J and C. --Michael Dillon