Topologies and physical infrastructure

Having spent a sufficient amount of time discussing what a network is, we should now consider how networks are actually implemented. This section will consider the various solutions that the engineers have arrived at to build systems that meet the definition of a network. We'll discuss the distinction between a logical and a physical topology for a network, and then examine the most common examples of the former.

Physical and logical topologies

In the same way that the topology of a geographic region describes how the features of that region are arranged over the area of the region, the topology of a network describes how the components of that network are arranged relative to one...