What Are Network Topologies?

Network Topology refers to layout of a network and how different nodes in a network are connected to each other and how they communicate. This slideshow describes five of the most common network topologies.

1. Mesh Topology: In a mesh network, devices are connected with many redundant interconnections between network nodes. In a true mesh topology every node has a connection to every other node in the network. There are two types of mesh topologies:

1. Full mesh topology occurs when every node has a circuit connecting it to every other node in a network. Full mesh is very 
2. expensive to implement but yields the greatest amount of redundancy, so in the event that one of those nodes fails, network traffic can be directed to any of the other nodes. Full mesh is usually reserved for backbone networks.
3. Partial mesh topology is less expensive to implement and yields less redundancy than full mesh topology. With partial mesh, some nodes are organized in a full mesh scheme but others are only connected to one or two in the network. Partial mesh topology is commonly found in peripheral networks connected to a full meshed backbone.