The failure of one connection will not usually affect the others. And, since all traffic passes through the hub, the hub becomes a central point for isolating network problems and gathering network statistics. The disadvantage to the star topology is that it requires a large amount of network cable. The star topology is the most common topology in local area networks. Star Topology A ring topology features a closed loop.
Data packets travel in a single direction around the ring from one network device to the next.
Each network device acts as a repeater, meaning it regenerates the signal. If one device fails, the entire network goes down. Ring Topology A mesh topology provides multiple links between devices. A true mesh topology would have a link between each device on a network. So a network of six devices would have 15 connections.