How does wiring shape which links can talk at once?
Per Wikipedia: “Topology describes how nodes and links are arranged — bus, star, ring, mesh — dictating broadcast domains and fault tolerance.”
Topology is city road map — layout decides which trips need a highway and where jams form.
- Choose physical layout
- Map broadcast vs point-to-point links
- Identify single points of failure
- Plan routing paths
- Scale by adding nodes
- Star centralizes but fails at hub
- Mesh robust but costly
- Bus simple but collision prone
- Ring ordered but break anywhere hurts
star -- hub connects all- Related: Broadcast Links — topology defines broadcasts
- Related: Circuit Switching — topology limits circuits
- Builds into: Packet Switching — routing depends on topology
- Related: Store-and-Forward — store-forward at each hop
- Thinking logical equals physical — VLAN vs cable differ
- Ignoring cost — mesh for 100 nodes impossible