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Flip to reveal answersWhich five factors decide a network topology?
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All 5 Flashcards — Network topologies
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Question
Which five factors decide a network topology?
Answer
Reliability, transmission speed, scalability, data collisions and cost. No shape wins on all five, so every recommendation is a trade between them.
Question
Describe a star topology and its main weakness.
Answer
Every device connects to one central switch, which makes it cheap, easy to extend and nearly collision-free. Its weakness is that the switch is a single point of failure: if it fails, nothing reaches anything.
Question
Why is a mesh topology reliable, and why is it rarely used at scale?
Answer
Every pair of devices has its own link, so there are many routes and no single link matters. But links grow roughly with the square of the devices — 5 need 10, 20 need 190 — so it is reserved for a few critical points.
Question
What is a hybrid topology?
Answer
Stars joined together, usually by more resilient links between them. Cheap where the devices sit, reliable where the traffic concentrates — which is what almost every real office and campus network looks like.
Question
Why are collisions rare on a star network?
Answer
Because the switch sends each frame only to the device it is addressed to, so devices are never competing for one shared line.
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Topic 2.2 hub
Network architecture
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Computer Science exam skills
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