CompTIA Network+ (2009 Objectives) Tutorials
Network Topology / Ring Topology
Visitors to VTC.com will be able to view all introductory videos for each training course.
Free Trial Members will gain access to first three chapters for each training course.
Full Access Members have full access to VTC.com�s entire library of video tutorials.
Learn More
Subtitles of the Movie (CompTIA Network+ (2009 Objectives) / Network Topology / Ring Topology)
The Ring topology is one that was very popular in the early years of networking and, as you can see, this one's very easy to recognize because your computers are basically in a ring formation. And each computer is connected to the next device or the next computer and you can think of these as just being daisy-chained around and it comes around and it terminates where it actually started. Data passes around the ring and this topology, again, was very widely used early on. It's not as popular today but you will still see this one out there because a lot of banks and a lot of really large companies really spent a lot of money investing in these Ring topologies and they're still running them even today. Now IBM had a product called Token Ring that was a very, very popular implementation of Ring topology. And the bottom line, what happens is, is it passes a token, with IBM's version, but you had to have the token to be able to communicate. And so if this computer wanted to communicate to someone, say to this computer right here, it put the data that it wanted to pass along into the token and passed it around the ring and when it got to that computer it read it and then it put a message in the token and so forth. And so, the token just simply went around and around this ring. Now, there's advantages and disadvantages here and let's go through these. The advantages of the Ring topology was that it was very orderly and very logical from a data traffic perspective. So if you needed to troubleshoot traffic issues or whatever this was really cool for those nerdy, logical network admin techs. Now, it performed better than a straight Bus topology, although this is, in a way, a Bus topology. It's just that the bus is circular in shape. Now the disadvantages of this are fairly obvious. If I have trouble with one computer and it doesn't grab the token or if it's not passing information around the ring, then that's going to cause problems for everyone. So, trouble in one place can take the whole ring down. And, the network interface cards, or the adapters that we plug the network cable in, is more expensive with these rings because they had to be made specially for Ring topologies and generally since anything's made specially for something it tends to be more expensive. And these were generally slower than the Ethernet networks that developed later on. So the Ring topology, you don't see very many people at all installing new Ring topologies. I'm sure there's some exceptions to that rule like everything else in IT, but for the most part, Rings are being replaced by other technologies - Ethernet technology and other topologies. So, anyway, that's the Ring topology. Very easy to recognize. It just looks like a circle or a close approximation of a circle and then now that you know the advantages and disadvantages these should be gimme questions on the exam when it comes to dealing with the Ring topology.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | CompTIA Network+ (2009 Objectives) |
| Author: | Mark Long |
| SKU: | 34216 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-90-9 |
| Release Date: | 2011-04-29 |
| Duration: | 6 hrs / 91 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
VTC Sign up & Benefits
- Unlimited Access
- 81,350 Video Tutorials (14,200 free)
- Video Available as Flash or QuickTime
- Over 715 Courses
- $30 for One Month Access
- Multi-User Discounts Available
