Examkin

Question

Difficulty: HardNetwork Topology Architectures

An enterprise organization with 40 remote branch sites needs to connect all sites to a central data center. Direct communication between branch sites is rarely required, but predictable bandwidth to the central data center and minimal WAN circuit licensing costs are strict requirements. If a single branch WAN link fails, only that site should lose connectivity. Which WAN topology architecture best meets these operational and financial requirements?

  1. Hub-and-spoke topologyAnswer
  2. B
    Full-mesh topology
  3. C
    Single ring topology
  4. D
    Point-to-point daisy-chain topology

Answer

The hub-and-spoke topology best satisfies the requirements by concentrating connections at the central hub, minimizing total WAN circuit costs, and isolating individual branch link failures.
The hub-and-spoke topology connects each remote branch directly to a central hub (the data center). This provides independent connectivity per branch, requires only one WAN link per branch site, and minimizes overall cost while aligning perfectly with centralized traffic patterns.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze WAN traffic flow requirements
Traffic flow is primarily client-to-server (branch-to-central data center), with minimal branch-to-branch communication required.
Understanding traffic flows dictates whether direct site-to-site WAN circuits are necessary.
2
Evaluate cost and link scaling across candidate topologies
A hub-and-spoke design scales linearly with N−1N-1 links (39 links for 40 sites), whereas a full-mesh design requires 40×392=780\frac{40 \times 39}{2} = 780 links.
Minimizing WAN circuit licensing and circuit operational expenditure requires choosing a cost-efficient topology.
3
Verify fault domain isolation capabilities
In a hub-and-spoke architecture, each spoke operates on its own WAN connection to the hub, so a failure on one spoke circuit affects only that specific branch.
Ring and linear/daisy-chain topologies risk impacting multiple downstream sites upon a single link outage.

Key Concept

WAN Topology Architectures (Hub-and-Spoke vs Mesh vs Ring)
Estimated Time:2m 0s
Rate this question

Topics

Network Topology Architectures

More questions from this topic