Star and mesh networks

1. Network topology

This is a technical term that describes the layout of connections in a network.

Each device within a network is called a 'node'. A node could be a workstation, a printer, a server etc.

Each of these nodes is connected to other nodes either by cable or Wi-Fi.

There are a number of different network topologies (layouts) for example, bus, ring, star and mesh. However for the OCR syllabus you only need to know about the star and mesh topologies.