Network topologies

[JerryMungo]

It's been a while since my networking days. These days with equipment being pretty much standard and the older token-ring and other style (bus, etc.) networks being phased out, is the discussion around network topologies still relevant?

What sort of network topolgies are common out there nowadays and what are the advantages?

What I see mostly is what I would classify as star topology, but what about others such as mesh and fully connected? Do any of you guys see these out there int he wild? When discussing mesh, wifi comes to mind, but with a typical modern network switch, is it common to have redundant paths without an expensive managed switch with special ports designed for redundancy? Is it even recommended to have more than one path on an unmanaged switch?

 

[Kloofvreter]

It's been a while since my networking days. These days with equipment being pretty much standard and the older token-ring and other style networks being phased out, is the discussion around network topologies still relevant?

What sort of network topolgies are common out there nowadays and what are the advantages?

What I see mostly is what I would classify as star topology, but what about others such as mesh and fully connected? Do any of you guys see these out there int he wild? When discussing mesh, wifi comes to mind, but with a typical modern network switch, is it common to have redundant paths without an expensive managed switch with special ports designed for redundancy? Is it even recommended to have more than one path on an unmanaged switch?

G.8032 compatible switch does not need special ports for redundancy.

 

[JerryMungo]

G.8032 compatible switch does not need special ports for redundancy.

Are these common, or is that a feature you'll only find in high end systems?

 

[Kloofvreter]

Are these common, or is that a feature you'll only find in high end systems?

It's common in the newer carrier grade equipment. So I cannot accurately answer your question with regards to consumer grade equipment and such.

 

[irBosOtter]

Define cheap switch. For me a cheap business switch (Cisco) costs R20 000, then that's a layer 2 switch but and you can setup redundant uplinks to the core, layer 2 switches don't do routing...
Redundant paths - do you see that as a physical cables as the example above or do you see that as another secondary route setup on a switch with routing, ie your default gateway is 10.0.0.1 but if that path is not available it will automatically route traffic to another router with ip of 10.1.10.1

 

[syntax]

It's been a while since my networking days. These days with equipment being pretty much standard and the older token-ring and other style (bus, etc.) networks being phased out, is the discussion around network topologies still relevant?

What sort of network topolgies are common out there nowadays and what are the advantages?

What I see mostly is what I would classify as star topology, but what about others such as mesh and fully connected? Do any of you guys see these out there int he wild? When discussing mesh, wifi comes to mind, but with a typical modern network switch, is it common to have redundant paths without an expensive managed switch with special ports designed for redundancy? Is it even recommended to have more than one path on an unmanaged switch?

Topologies are still very relevant. They vary depending on network use etc
So a DC topology would be different to a standard Campus and so on.
Best "recommended" practices and real world often differs and you need to be realistic with what you are designing.

The 2 and 3 tier topologies are still quite relevant for enterprise networks, although again this changes depending on security concerns as well as any specific redundancy required.

There really are so many options, it would depend on budget, client business type, network type etc

To answer your question, you need some kind of intelligence for redundant paths, otherwise you will loop. You can get managed switches for a few thousand rand, so there really is no excuse unless you are a start up. Redundant paths are also wasteful, you could combat this using switch or port virtualization technologies, but then you add complexity (there is always a trade off).

You probably also want to look at the relevance of a wired network at all, wireless has its own issues, but shouldnt be disregarded over wired.

 

[syntax]

Define cheap switch. For me a cheap business switch (Cisco) costs R20 000, then that's a layer 2 switch but and you can setup redundant uplinks to the core, layer 2 switches don't do routing...
Redundant paths - do you see that as a physical cables as the example above or do you see that as another secondary route setup on a switch with routing, ie your default gateway is 10.0.0.1 but if that path is not available it will automatically route traffic to another router with ip of 10.1.10.1

managed switches dont just mean routing, you would get features like STP (and all their variants), probably some port security etc.
Security should never be disregarded and having something supporting 802.1x would usually be my recommendation on the access layer.
STP would obviously be a bonus for redundant paths, or the ability to ether-channel / port-channel (name your term) to the distribution / collapsed core would be nice