The star network is the more resilient of the three topologies introduced in this course. Essentially all PC's are connected to a single server or router. Each will have a single cable running from the PC to the server. This means that if a cable breaks then only one PC will be effected. This is different to the other networks which would completely fail if any of the cables should break. It does fail if the server goes down. However having a spare server ready to kick in would solve this problem. Backup servers are common in networks which need to be highly available such as banking network or googles network. Below is a diagram of a star network.

A printer has been added to the diagram to show that it is not just PC's which can be networked. In most schools, colleges, universities, companies and even homes printers will be connected to the network so they can be accessed by all PC's. A print server is quite common in a network in order to manage printing by using a print manager.

Advantages

• Much more resilient to failure than the other two.
• Does not degrade as more PC's are added to the network as long as the bandwidth can handle the traffic.

Disadvantages

• Much more expensive and complicated to set up.
• When the server goes down the whole network goes down with it.
• Requires much higher expertise to manage.