Читать книгу Networking All-in-One For Dummies - Lowe Doug, Doug Lowe - Страница 35

A fourth type of network topology, known as mesh, has multiple connections between each of the nodes on the network, as shown in Figure 2-4. The advantage of a mesh topology is that if one cable breaks, the network can use an alternative route to deliver its packets.

FIGURE 2-4: Mesh topology.

Mesh networks are often used to link switches in a LAN. In Figure 2-4, the mesh has a total of seven connections. If any of these seven connections goes bad, any switch can still reach any other switch while traveling through at most one intermediate switch.

Mesh networks are also very common for metropolitan or wide area networks (WANs). These networks use routers to route packets from network to network. For reliability and performance reasons, routers are usually arranged in a way that provides multiple paths between any two nodes on the network in a mesh-like arrangement.