When you are designing your network – be it wired, wireless, fiber or other media – it’s always important to thing of what type of network topology it will be – and most popular choices are Star, Mesh and Hybrid type – let’s briefly define all of them.

 

 

A star topology is just like its name and makes a star formation with a central device that provides all of the connectivity.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1: Star Topology

 

 

 

Star design is cheaper due to the small amount of connections, but is risky with a single point of failure on the central device.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2: Mesh Topology

 

 

A mesh topology has connections between every device. This is a more expensive design, but offers more redundancy and optimal traffic flows.

 

 

A hybrid topology is created when different types of topologies are combined. For example, if you merged a star and meshed topology than you would have a hybrid topology.

 

 

 

 

Figure 3: Hybrid Topology