Bus topology is fairly old news and you probably won't be seeing much of these around in any modern office or home.

With the Bus topology, all workstations are connect directly to the main backbone that carries the data. Traffic generated by any computer will travel across the backbone and be received by all workstations. This works well in a small network of 2-5 computers, but as the number of computers increases so will the network traffic and this can greatly decrease the performance and available bandwidth of your network.

The Star or Hub topology is one of the most common network topologies found in most offices and home networks. It has become very popular in contrast to the bus type (which we just spoke about), because of the cost and the ease of troubleshooting.

The advantage of the star topology is that if one computer on the star topology fails, then only the failed computer is unable to send or receive data. The remainder of the network functions normally.

In a mesh topology, each computer is connected to every other computer by a separate cable. This configuration provides redundant paths through the new work, so if one computer blows up, you don't lose the network :) On a large scale, you can connect multiple LANs using mesh topology with leased telephone lines, Thicknet coaxial cable or fiber optic cable.

Again, the big advantage of this topology is its backup capabilities by providing multiple paths through the network.

The method by which the data is transmitted around the ring is called token passing. IBM's token ring uses this method. A token is a special series of bits that contains control information. Possession of the token allows a network device to transmit data to the network. Each network has only one token.

MRaz pic...