1. Draw a basic bus topology with 4 computers attached to the backbone. Label the computers A, B, C, and D. (The book has an example of a bus topology in Lesson 1).
2. Imagine the user at computer A needs to open a file on computer D in a peer-to-peer fashion. What path do you think the data will follow from A to D and then from D to A? Add this path, as a dotted line, to your network diagram.
3. On the opposite side of your paper, using no more than half a page, draw a star-shaped topology with 4 computers attached to a central connectivity device. Label the computers E, F, G, and H. (Note: At this point, none of these workstations are servers).
4. Imagine that the user at computer E wants to open a file that is on computer H s hard disk, in a peer-to-peer fashion. With a dotted line, draw the path you think data would take between these 2 computers.
5. Now add a printer and a server to your star topology network drawing. Make sure the printer is connected to the server and not directly to the network. With the addition of a server, you have changed the network from a peer-to-peer network to a client/server network. The printer has become a resource that all the workstation users can share.
6. Suppose the new server is configured to provide all necessary services to the entire star topology network, including print and file services. Now if computer G sends a document to the printer, what path do you think the document s data will take to the printer? Draw this path as a dotted line on your network.
7. Most modern networks are not simple star, bus, or ring topologies, instead, they are some combination of these arrangements. A common network design combines 2 or more star-shaped networks via a bus to create a star-bus topology. On the same sheet of paper, draw a second star topology network that consists of 3 computers, labeled I, J, and K, that are linked to a central connectivity device.
8. Now draw a line between the 2 connectivity devices to indicate a bus-style connection between the star-based networks. You have now designed a hybrid star-bus topology network.
9. Suppose that computer J wants to print to the printer you just added in step 5. Using a dotted line, draw the path you think computer J s document will take to the printer. Remember that the server still controls all the print functions for that network.
10. Of the 3 different kinds of networks you worked on in this project, which one do you think would allow for the easiest expansion?