FreeBSD® Unleashed

Network Topologies

Your FreeBSD machine might be installed on a university network, in a professional co-location facility, within a corporate enterprise network, or on a home dial-up network (or dialed-up directly)—and those are just the most common types of settings. Different network topologies, or logical layouts of devices and data link mechanisms, are as numerous as the individual networks in the world—no two are exactly the same. However, virtually all networks share a common basic topology and a few fundamental components.

In Figure 22.1, we can see the type of topology that would be found in a typical home network, but it's also serviceable as a simplified diagram of an enterprise or university network.

Figure 22.1. A basic network topology, ...