Advantages and Disadvantages of Bus Topology

Advantages    
          Advantages of a bus topology include ease of installation. Backbone cable can be laid along the most efficient path, then connected to the nodes by drop lines of various lengths. In this way, a bus uses less cabling than mesh or star topologies. In a star, for example, four network devices in the same room require four lengths of cable reaching all the way to the hub. In a bus, this redundancy is eliminated. Only the backbone cable stretches through the entire facility. Each drop line has to reach only as far as the nearest point on the backbone.
 Disadvantages
          Disadvantages include difficult reconnection and fault isolation. A bus is usually designed to be optimally efficient at installation. It can therefore be difficult to add new devices. Signal reflection at the taps can cause degradation in quality. This degradation can be controlled by limiting the number and spacing of devices connected to a given length of cable. Adding new devices may therefore require modification or replacement of the backbone.
          In addition, a fault or break in the bus cable stops all transmission, even between devices on the same side of the problem. The damaged area reflects signals back in the direction of origin, creating noise in both directions.
          Bus topology was the one of the first topologies used in the design of early localarea networks. Ethernet LANs can use a bus topology, but they are less popular now a days.