IP Routing Fundamentals

Topologies for Large Internetworks

The preceding survey of sample topologies for simple internetworks should have demonstrated that there are drawbacks to each topology. Many of the topologies in the preceding section suffered from the same limitation: an inherent inability to scale upward. For those of you whose needs transcend the simple topologies, this section presents a sampling of topologies that can only be used in larger, more complex internetworks.

These topologies include the following:

• Full mesh

• Two-tier

• Three-tier

• Hybridized

Full Mesh

At the extreme high end of the reliability spectrum is the full mesh topology. This topology features the ultimate reliability and fault tolerance. Every networked node is directly connected to ...