What Is Topology?

In the world of networks, topology is an essential thing. It's like, "Where are you from?" it's more than that: it's also the pattern of interconnected elements. For example, if you're asking someone where they're from, they might tell you they live in New York City. That's their physical location, but it only tells part of the story. You still have to ask them where their family lives and how often they get together. The same is valid for network topology: a network's physical layout tells us where its hardware is located and how it's connected, but we still need to know what kind of data is traveling through it and how those paths change over time. (How often do these paths change?) In short: There are two kinds of topologies: physical and logical. Network topology is the way your network is connected. It's like a map of your network, which can be physical or logical. Topology is a skeleton for your network. It tells you where everything is and how it's connected. It also helps you understand what will happen if you change your network's design or layout. Network topology can be physical or logical, depending on whether you're looking at the hardware configuration or the path data needs to take to travel around the network. In a physical topology, each node (such as a computer) has its wire connecting it to one or more other nodes. This type of biological connection has several types: bus, star, ring and tree. Bus networks are an older type of connection structure where each node has one cable running between them, called a backbone cable. The problem with this type of connection structure is that if there's any break in the backbone cable (like one person tripping over it), all traffic stops flowing through that part of the network until someone fixes it, and everyone has to wait until they do!