Essay: The Drawbacks of Star Architecture

Sample Essay

Words 1,210

Just like ring architecture, star architecture has its drawbacks. “The star topology is the most susceptible to traffic problems because the central computer must process all messages on the network. The central computer must have sufficient capacity to handle the traffic peaks or it may become overloaded and network performance will suffer.” (Fitzgerald & Dennis, 2001, page 9) To go from point A to B you have to pass through the central computer. This minimizes the links you have to go through to get from one place to the other. For this to operate smoothly the central computer that is linked to all the other computers must be extra reliable and be like Big Brother and see everything all the time. If the central computer ever fails the entire topology will be affected and stop working. (Fitzgerald & Dennis, 2001, page 9)

Coming back to connect the dots example the current picture looks like a star. The central dot is connected to each of the other 6 dots. Now if we connect the dots between each of the 6 dots in every possible way we end up with mesh architecture. “Full mesh networks are seldom used because of the extremely high cost. Partial mesh architecture, in which many, but not all, computers are connected, is far more common.” (Fitzgerald & Dennis, 2001, page 9) Wireless networks usually use this kind of architecture so the messages can’t be delivered fast and more efficiently. Having a full mesh system is extremely expensive so partial mesh systems are sometimes more common. Compared to a ring and star topology, mesh architecture gets the message across fast. If one link is not working there are several other routes to send the message. Unfortunately though this architecture has its drawbacks too because full mesh architectures aren’t always implemented. In a partial mesh system there might be a few links to get from one place to the other and if one of them stops working it can affect the entire network. (Fitzgerald & Dennis, 2001, page 10)

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