Can anyone please me out explaining the different topologies of computer networks?
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In networking, the term topology refers to the layout of connected devices on a network. One can think of a topology as a network's "shape"This shape does not necessarily correspond to the actual physical layout of the devices on the network. For example, the computers on a home LAN may be arranged in a circle, but it would be highly unlikely to find an actual ring topology there. \nNetwork topologies are categorized into the following basic types: bus ring star tree mesh \nMore complex networks can be built as hybrids of two or more of the above basic topologies. \nBus networks (not to be confused with the system bus of a computer) use a common backbone to connect all devices. A single cable, the backbone functions as a shared communication medium, that devices attach or tap into with an interface connector. A device wanting to communicate with another device on the network sends a broadcast message onto the wire that all other devices see, but only the intended recipient actually accepts and processes the message. \nIn a ring network, every device has exactly two neighbors for communication purposes. All messages travel through a ring in the same direction (effectively either "clockwise" or "counterclockwise"). A failure in any cable or device breaks the loop and can take down the entire network. \nMany home networks use the star topology. A star network features a central connection point called a "hub" that may be an actual hub or a switch. Devices typically connect to the hub with Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) Ethernet. \nTree topologies integrate multiple star topologies together onto a bus. In its simplest form, only hub devices connect directly to the tree bus, and each hub functions as the "root" of a tree of devices. This bus/star hybrid approach supports future expandability of the network much better than a bus (limited in the number of devices due to the broadcast traffic it generates) or a star (limited by the number of hub ports) alone. \nMesh topologies involve the concept of routes. Unlike each of the previous topologies, messages sent on a mesh network can take any of several possible paths from source to destination. (Recall that in a ring, although two cable paths exist, messages can only travel in one direction.) Some WANs, like the Internet, employ mesh routing. \n\nConclusion\nTopologies remain an important part of network design theory. You can probably build a home or small business network without understanding the difference between a bus design and a star design, but understanding the concepts behind these gives you a deeper understanding of important elements like hubs, broadcasts, ports, and routes.
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Just use google or yahoo and type in "computer networks" and read the links...
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This is a networking problem - look up 'Linear Bus', 'Star' or 'Hub', 'Token Ring' and 'Fully Connected Mesh'.\n\nYou need 21 for a fully connected topology, but you could do it with far less.
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Its better to have VLANs and interconnect them via routers or Layer 3 switches.\n\nIts not good to have isolated islands for each dept or area, since nowadays resources like internet bandwidth have to be shared among multiple users and locations.
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All devices are connected to one another in the shape of a closed loop, so that each device is connected directly to two other devices, one on either side of it. Ring topologies are relatively expensive and difficult to install, but they offer high bandwidth and can span large distances. \n\nYou have to have two network card per computer not easy to setup eather. Each card has to have it own IP address given to it in Network settings.
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The spanning tree protocol for routers work like this.\n\n1. Each router is supposed to be a node in the graph and physical connecting lines as the edges.\n\n2. Each router puts a dummy packet to all its neighbours and calculates the cost of the physical network line there.\n\n3. This cost is assigned to the respective edge.\n\n4. Once all the edges are assigned the weight. The spanning tree is calculated using either the Prim's or the Kruskal's algorithm, which is a simple elimination algorithm.\n\nThe spanning tree algorithm highlights the edges which are to be used while multicasting or broadcasting a message packet. The spanning tree ensures that \n\nA) all the nodes (routers) get connected, \n\nB) there is no repetition of data transfer to a router,\nand\nC) the total cost (sum of costs of all the physical lines used) of the network is the minimal.\n\nDue to dynamic nature of networks(their status and traffic), one needs to run the Spanning Tree Algorithm over and over again. This is particularly done after a specified amount of time.\n\nRegards\nParvesh
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A bridge s basically used to connect 2 or more networks of same type.\n\nA router s used to connect networks of same or different types\n\nFor more details visit the following links
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I am not sure if you are referring to the OSI layers, if it is the OSI layers, there would be 7. Data, Physical, Network, Transport, Session, Presenation, and Application. Hope this is what you are looking for.
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I'm not sure about websites, but this book is AWESOME:\n\n"Practical TCP/IP: Designing, Using, and Troubleshooting TCP/IP Networks on Linux and Windows"\n\nI highly recommend it for the absolute beginner and networking-veterans. It describes *everything* in great detail, including troubleshooting tips and tools. It has screenshots and sample outputs for both Unix and Windows network tools and tons of insights from the author who's job was to troubleshoot and fix simple and complex networks.\n\nThe best part is, he teaches by example. You set up little networks and slowly grow their features and nodes.
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do you mean something more that nodes and edges?  what kind of network?  math?  computer?  what?
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Interconnecting devices which are routers, provide a transit for the traffic, hosts serve as end sytstems and servers serve the end systems.\n\nThats the Basic INTERNET !
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One of various network topologies. A Bus network is one in which all of the computers on the network are connected to the main wire of the network.
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Good question !! base of networking.\n   Gateway: When number of system are in the same network & want to access the other network a device called as Router or L3 switch helps to connect other networks. So to move out to other network through router or the l3 switch one ip is given to the interface of the device ie router or switch. That ip is called as gateway of the network.\n Also gateway is the hardware device which helps to convert the protocols.\n  Subnet : Sub net the word it self gives the idea that it divide's the network. Subnetting help to divide the host bits & network bits.\n  Tcp-ip : Tcp-ip is the universal suite of protocol.It works on the transport layer of OSI module. It is the media of communication between computers.\n   Its very deep theory dear !!!! but i had given brief idea on it !!! i hope u get it!!!!  hacker2783@yahoo.com
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First you need to know th differnce. To understand the difference between a router and a switch you need to understand the ISO model.\n\nISO/OSI Network Model\nThe standard model for networking protocols and distributed applications is the International Standard Organization's Open System Interconnect (ISO/OSI) model. It defines seven network layers. \n\nLayer 1 - Physical \nPhysical layer defines the cable or physical medium itself, e.g., thinnet, thicknet, unshielded twisted pairs (UTP). All media are functionally equivalent. The main difference is in convenience and cost of installation and maintenance. Converters from one media to another operate at this level. \n\nLayer 2 - Data Link \nData Link layer defines the format of data on the network. A network data frame, aka packet, includes checksum, source and destination address, and data. The largest packet that can be sent through a data link layer defines the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU). The data link layer handles the physical and logical connections to the packet's destination, using a network interface. A host connected to an Ethernet would have an Ethernet interface to handle connections to the outside world, and a loopback interface to send packets to itself. \n\nEthernet addresses a host using a unique, 48-bit address called its Ethernet address or Media Access Control (MAC) address. MAC addresses are usually represented as six colon-separated pairs of hex digits, e.g., 8:0:20:11:ac:85. This number is unique and is associated with a particular Ethernet device. Hosts with multiple network interfaces should use the same MAC address on each. The data link layer's protocol-specific header specifies the MAC address of the packet's source and destination. When a packet is sent to all hosts (broadcast), a special MAC address (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff) is used. \n\nLayer 3 - Network \nNFS uses Internetwork Protocol (IP) as its network layer interface. IP is responsible for routing, directing datagrams from one network to another. The network layer may have to break large datagrams, larger than MTU, into smaller packets and host receiving the packet will have to reassemble the fragmented datagram. The Internetwork Protocol identifies each host with a 32-bit IP address. IP addresses are written as four dot-separated decimal numbers between 0 and 255, e.g., 129.79.16.40. The leading 1-3 bytes of the IP identify the network and the remaining bytes identifies the host on that network. The network portion of the IP is assigned by InterNIC Registration Services, under the contract to the National Science Foundation, and the host portion of the IP is assigned by the local network administrators, locally by noc@indiana.edu. For large sites, usually subnetted like ours, the first two bytes represents the network portion of the IP, and the third and fourth bytes identify the subnet and host respectively. \n\nEven though IP packets are addressed using IP addresses, hardware addresses must be used to actually transport data from one host to another. The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is used to map the IP address to it hardware address. \n\nLayer 4 - Transport \nTransport layer subdivides user-buffer into network-buffer sized datagrams and enforces desired transmission control. Two transport protocols, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP), sits at the transport layer. Reliability and speed are the primary difference between these two protocols. TCP establishes connections between two hosts on the network through 'sockets' which are determined by the IP address and port number. TCP keeps track of the packet delivery order and the packets that must be resent. Maintaining this information for each connection makes TCP a stateful protocol. UDP on the other hand provides a low overhead transmission service, but with less error checking. NFS is built on top of UDP because of its speed and statelessness. Statelessness simplifies the crash
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router - this is often a bundle of services for building a local area network.  It will contain a gateway or bridge to an internet service provider, and contain a switch for internet sharing.  It will also contain a DHCP server, which assigns IP addresses to devices on the LAN/\n\nswitch - an Ethernet switch works like a hub, but automatically configures that port for the IP parameters that is needed by that port.   So if you are using a cross-over cable to connect to a computer, the switch will automatically cross-back, so it works.  This is the NO BRAINER HUB.\n\nhub - a network hub connects various devices to a network.  But it is a dumb device, so it is up to the user to plug in the proper patch cable or cross-over cable.\n\ngateway - in general, a gateway is a device that connects a local area network to a wide area network or internet service.\n\nbridge - this is a general term to describe the connection of multiple devices and protocols to direct network communication.\n\nAs you can see, a router does it ALL.  I recommend that you use a high speed switch if you want to expand the number of ports that your router provides.  \n\nOH RATZ....  I started fooling around with this stuff at a whopping 5MHz back in 1983 for the stock exchanges.  I rewrote some TCP/IP protocol stuff before most geeks ever heard of it.   It was all Digital Equipment and Intel that were banging heads in those days. \n\nGood luck and Happy Computing!
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A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers. P2P networks are typically used for connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections. Such networks are useful for many purposes. Sharing content files (see file sharing) containing audio, video, data or anything in digital format is very common, and realtime data, such as telephony traffic, is also passed using P2P technology.\n\nA pure peer-to-peer network does not have the notion of clients or servers, but only equal peer nodes that simultaneously function as both "clients" and "servers" to the other nodes on the network. This model of network arrangement differs from the client-server model where communication is usually to and from a central server. A typical example for a non peer-to-peer file transfer is an FTP server where the client and server programs are quite distinct, and the clients initiate the download/uploads and the servers react to and satisfy these requests.\n\nSome networks and channels, such as Napster, OpenNAP, or IRC @find, use a client-server structure for some tasks (e.g., searching) and a peer-to-peer structure for others. Networks such as Gnutella or Freenet use a peer-to-peer structure for all purposes, and are sometimes referred to as true peer-to-peer networks, although Gnutella is greatly facilitated by directory servers that inform peers of the network addresses of other peers.\n\nPeer-to-peer architecture embodies one of the key technical concepts of the internet, described in the first internet Request for Comments, "RFC 1, Host Software" [1] dated 7 April 1969. More recently, the concept has achieved recognition in the general public in the context of the absence of central indexing servers in architectures used for exchanging multimedia files.\n\nThe concept of peer to peer is increasingly evolving to an expanded usage as the relational dynamic active in distributed networks, i.e. not just computer to computer, but human to human. Yochai Benkler has developed the notion of commons-based peer production to denote collaborative projects such as free software. Associated with peer production are the concept of peer governance (referring to the manner in which peer production projects are managed) and peer property (referring to the new type of licenses which recognize individual authorship but not exclusive property rights, such as the GNU General Public License and the Creative Commons License).
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Imagine this scenario...You have 3 computers and u want to connect them all and make a small network...how ur gonna do that...here comes hub into picture...Hub allows you to connect multiple computers to share a single network...and Switch is a bigger brother of Hub normally with 10 to 24 ports, and router is altogether different from hub or switch ...routers r used for Wide Area Connectivity....that is between different networks....Hope this solver ur prob buddy.