Fault Tolerance:

Fault tolerance refers to how resilient a network is to failure. For example, a network that can still fully operate if a connection fails has high fault tolerance, and vice versa. Higher fault tolerance is better for security since it is less likely that systems can go down when things go wrong! However, high fault tolerance may come at higher costs. This is reflected in a variety of network topologies. Network topologies are the different structures of a network. Let’s look at some:

Network Topologies:

Line:

The line topology is, like its name suggests, a line. Since it uses ta minimal amount of wires to connect everything, it's more cost efficient. However, it is less secure because data must pass through all intermediate nodes before reaching its destination. It also has low fault tolerance.

Bus:

The bus topology is a little more secure, since packets do not have intermediate nodes they must pass through, but it is still not that fault tolerant. If the main line were to fail, it would cause a lot of the network to stop functioning.

Ring:

The ring topology is another one in which packets are forced to go through many nodes to reach the destination. However, if one connection were to fail, packets would still be able to travel the other way around to their destination, so it is a little more resilient!

Fully Connected:

The fully connected topology is where every node is directly connected to the others. This is one of the most fault tolerant, since packets have a multitude of ways to get to the destination. However, the cost of having all these wires to connect nodes really adds up, which is what prevents individuals and companies from defaulting to this method.