Common topologies:
• Bus
• Ring
• Star
• Mesh
BUS TOPOLOGY
In a bus topology, all computers are attached to a single continuous cable that is terminated at both ends, which is the simplest way to create a physical network.
RING TOPOLOGY
In the ring topology, each computer is connected directly to two other computers in the network. Data moves down a one-way path from one computer to another.
The good news about laying out cable in a ring is that the cable design is simple. The bad news is that, as with bus topology, any break, such as adding or removing a computer, disrupts the entire network. Also, because you have to “break” the ring in order to add another station, it is very difficult to reconfigure without bringing down the whole network. For this reason, the physical ring topology is seldom used.
STAR TOPOLOGY
Unlike those in a bus topology, each computer in a star topology is connected to a central point by a separate cable. The central point is a device known as a hub.
Although this setup uses more cable than a bus, a star topology is much more fault tolerant than a bus topology. This means that if a failure occurs along one of the cables connecting to the hub, only that portion of the network is affected, not the entire network. It also means that you can add new stations just by running a single new cable.
MESH TOPOLOGY
In a mesh topology, a path exists from each station to every other station in the network. While not usually seen in LANs, a variation on this type of topology—the hybrid mesh—is used on the Internet and other WANs in a limited fashion.
Hybrid mesh topology networks can have multiple connections between some locations, but this is done only for redundancy.
Also, it is not a true mesh because there is not a connection between each and every node, just a few for backup purposes.








