I do not believe network protection,in this context, works in same ways a physical protection,e.g. Armour.
Network hardware properly designed to withstand certain kinds of attacks will not be physically damaged by their use. Put another way,a piece of hardware that withstands (has capacity for) X number of transactions per second will no more get damaged if it is discarding vs processing them.
This is not to say there's no way to damage hardware with software but I don't believe the question is that generic.
