A company called Acme, has hired you to
design their new computer network.
They have told you fault tolerance is
essential;they cannot afford to have their entire network go down.
Which topology would you utilize for them?
A Ring, Node, Star, or Bus.
I say a Ring, but my roommate says
I am wrong- He says you would utilize
a Node for them. Which of us is right?
Ring or Node?
In a Ring topology, each computer is only connected to to other computers forming a circular path for the signal to travel through. If one of those connections fail, the network can easily fail.
When I first read this, I was wondering if, by "node" they meant a mesh network topology. That's the best option of all since it's self correcting. For more information on that, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_network
Between Ring, Bus, and Star, Star is the best option. If one computer on a star network goes down, the network stays up. But if the hub goes down, it's going to crash.
I'd say Node because I'm connecting that with a Mesh Network in my mind. Read up on that link about reliability.
Matt
In this case, your roommate is correct. The topology that would be best suited for Acme's requirement of fault tolerance is the Node (or Mesh) topology.
A Node (or Mesh) topology is a type of network configuration where each computer is interconnected with all the other computers in the network. This means that even if one connection fails, the network will still be able to function because there are multiple alternative paths for the data to reach its destination. This redundancy ensures that the entire network does not go down if a single connection fails.
On the other hand, a Ring topology, as you mentioned, is not ideal for fault tolerance because it relies on a circular path for the signal to travel. If one connection in the ring fails, it can disrupt the entire network.
Therefore, in the context of fault tolerance, the Node (or Mesh) topology would be the better option for Acme's new computer network.