you could refer to the discussions held at the joint ISOC/IETF mtg in Montreal in 1996 about injecting host routes for critical infrastructure support services.

I'm in washington this week, and as usual, some of the strangest ideas come up.

Suppose I wanted the best chance for my packet to get through, no matter what tier 1, 2, 3 network was still operating between points A and B. I designate a "special" IP address block, and arrange for the top 10 providers to accept announcements for the block both directly, and transit through any of the other 10 providers. This would allow transit via a third-party network to restore connectivity across a partioned AS. For this network block, other than BGP loop detection, it would bypass the normal peer/transit/peer filters.

If a AS was partioned, you might see a route cross two or three primary backbones, and even the same backbone twice. But if the packet went through, its worth it.

The questions is: Are more available paths really better? Or does it just create more instability?