Network Topologies

There are five basic topologies:

In mesh topology, every device has a dedicated point-to-point link to every other device. In a mesh network of n number of device each device must have (n-1) number of port to plug network cable in coming from the other (n-1) device and total number of dedicated connection in the network is n(n+1)/2 .

Mesh Topology

In a star topology, each device has a dedicated point-to-point link only to a central controller device, usually called a hub.

Star Topology

A bus topology is multi point. One long cable acts as backbone to link all the devices in a network.

BUS Topology

In a ring topology, each device has a dedicated point-to-point connection with only the two devices on either side of it.

Ring Topology

In a tree topology, two or more hubs and/or data centers are connected to one another in a succession of levels to provide redundancy. It also called cascaded star topology or hierarchical network. (A network that is based upon the physical hierarchical topology must have at least three levels in the hierarchy of the tree, since a network with a central 'root' node and only one hierarchical level below it would exhibit the physical topology of a star)

Tree Topology

Hybrid topology is not another topology but the combination of more than one topology in a network. Below examples can help to understand.

Draw a hybrid topology with a star backbone and three ring networks.

Draw a hybrid topology with a bus backbone connecting three ring networks and each ring networks connects three star networks.

Comparison of the Network Topologies:

	Mesh	Star	Bus	Ring	Tree
Installation Cost	High	Moderate	Low	Low	Moderate
Device Adding	Difficult	Easy	Easy	Easy	Easy
Fault Ditection	Easy	Easy	Difficult	Easy	Difficult
Network Robustness	High	Morderate	Low	Low	Low
Connection Media	Twested Pair, Optical Fiber	Twisted Pair	Optial Fiber, Coaxial Cable	Optial Fiber, Coaxial Cable	Twested Pair, Optical Fiber