Question

A company called Acme, has hired you to
design their new computer network.
They have told you fault tolerance is
essential;they cannot afford to have their entire network go down.
Which topology would you utilize for them?
A Ring, Node, Star, or Bus.

I say a Ring, but my roommate says
I am wrong- He says you would utilize
a Node for them. Which of us is right?
Ring or Node?

In a Ring topology, each computer is only connected to to other computers forming a circular path for the signal to travel through. If one of those connections fail, the network can easily fail.

When I first read this, I was wondering if, by "node" they meant a mesh network topology. That's the best option of all since it's self correcting. For more information on that, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_network

Between Ring, Bus, and Star, Star is the best option. If one computer on a star network goes down, the network stays up. But if the hub goes down, it's going to crash.

I'd say Node because I'm connecting that with a Mesh Network in my mind. Read up on that link about reliability.

Matt