Network topology???

I was doing a little reading on network topology,and everything's pretty clear to me but one thing.What,if any,advantages does the ring topology have over the star topology?I guess there must be something I'm missing.

As you know in a ring if the cable fails then the whole network may become useless.In a star connection it requires more cable and hub.But failure in the cable will only effect the corresponding machine.But if the hub fails the network too fails. Hope this is some help.

What about speed?It seems a ring topology would be slower than a star because the token is constantly running around in a circle(well sort of).

Well with the ring topology you're 100% that there will be no collision because the device as to wait for the token to send data

look here

Yes this is true ...
But as there is less change of collision there is also more chance of "junk" staying on the ring and slowing down the network (I see a lot of that here at my job) ... then you have to try and locate where it comes from or came from.
There are not alot of advantages in the ring topology.

Gr33tz,

Cemetric

Yeah it's mostly about collision avoidance....
It's pretty much concidered deprecated...

Ammo

There is also a FDDI ring architecture which offers some benefits over the standard ring topolgy, although has the big drawback of cost, and also is better served as the backbone for a network. Still, thought I`d mention it as it is a ring topolgy of sorts.

Ring topology is an advantage for a few machine and high speed links, but otherwise use the star top or something like hub and spoke top. The star is prefferable since the pcs don't have to wait for the token to arrive... Supppose you are dl a 600mgs for a movie and the guys next to you is trying to get a email to his provider .... guess what will happen if the dl starts first.

Star also can take advantages of multi bw capacity and ddr depanding upon the links that you are using and can optimize it too.
check out http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/...0800e955d.html
btw star top is the most common top used

There is also something to be said for ease of troubleshooting on a ring network. From what I understand, if a node fails, it's pretty easy to determine where the failure occurred (i.e. "I can ping up to this machine, but not beyond it."). Here are some other advantages for a standard ring topology that I found here:

Quote:

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* Very orderly network where every device has access to the token and the opportunity to transmit
* Performs better than a star topology under heavy network load

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I don't think you have to worry much about collisions like you used to as most star topologies are now useing switches instead of hubs which drasticly reduces collision possiblity.