LAN Toplogy?

Question

Where can I view a sample LAN topology? And what are you opinions for the different types: bus, star, and ring. It seems that star would be best for a company that needs an enterprise telecommunications network. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

this is a really complicated question, and there are many, many things to consider when planning a LAN topology. i assume you mean how you should segment your network, and where you should put routers, switches, bridges, as well as wireless access points.

however, when you say an "enterprise telecommunications network" do you mean for different sites to talk to each other (like using voip enterprise wide)? if that's what you mean, and the sites are not on the same campus, you are really talking about WAN topology.

so, here are some questions to start you off:
how many locations?
where are the locations?
how many people total? per location?
what sort of things will the network be used for? (probably not just VOIP; you have intranet traffic, internet traffic, mail, chat, voip, network management-related traffic....synchronous vs. asynchronous communications)
what types of users do you have? what about remote users? what percentage are remote? and how do they connect? via VPN?

those questions really guide all other questions, and decisions, about how to lay out your network.

in short, there are many, many considerations, and depending on the size and the planned usage, you would be best served by an experienced network engineer.

Answer 2

I'm assuming you are talking logcal structure here.

You can skip ring and bus. They work fine for small numbers of computers, but after a couple dozen machines you get problems.

Star is good, but for communications heavy operations, you need to have a secondary default gateway warm. If your DG goes down on a star, everybody goes down with it.

Mesh, topology is the best you can get for enterprise situations. a full mesh means that every computer in the system has at least two paths back to the local loop.

Go for a logical star I'd say.
It will keep from losing your head trying to troubleshoot. If your cabling is good and you have some redundancy at the gate, you shouldn't have any trouble with a star.

Answer 3

Search Google for various graphic samples.
Here are the basic layouts

Bus - You have a main cable with "T" taps connecting each machine. Used with some coaxial cable type networks such as ABs Controlnet

Star - The most common - the router or switch is the center of the star. The cables run out to the different machines

Ring - not used much anymore - It is a closed circle of cable with T connectors to each machine

Most business networks today use multiple switches, each connecting it's "star" of machines and the various switches formed into a larger "star" controlled by a router.