Advantages and Disadvantages of Bus Topology in Networking: Simply bus topology is known as linear topology. It consists of a computer that is attached to a common cable called a bus or trunk which is also known as the backbone of the network.
Bus topology is one of the simplest network topologies. In this topology, all the nodes or computers are connected to a single cable which is called the bus.
Advantages of Bus Topology
- It is simple, reliable, and easy to use.
- It is easy to extend any number of computers that can be added using the connector in a bus topology.
- Since it uses coaxial cable for networking and data sharing.
- It is less expensive than other arrangement
- It is flexible and scalable.
- Very simple than the ring topology to troubleshoot if there is a cable failure because sections can be isolated and tested independently.
- Failure of one node does not affect the rest of the bus network.
Disadvantages of Bus Topology
- If the cable fails, then the entire system fails to respond to the user.
- Since the cable is one, fault finding and troubleshooting become very difficult.
- Data traffic is high.
- Data collision is high.
- Slower than the ring topology as data cannot be transmitted while the bus is in use by other nodes.
- Performance of the network slows down rapidly with more nodes or heavy network traffic.