network topology?

[sam111]

I have setup simple star topology networks using a simple 8port linksys switch/router.

I want to setup simple wired mesh and ring topology networks.
I am wondering what the necessary hardware I need to do so?

Obviously I am curious how I can have the NIC card which has only one RJ45 port be able to directly connect to all the computers ,...etc as in a mesh.

Could I splice the cat6 wires and connect them on a 66 or 110 block?
I am a little unsure about this maybe the only way is to buy a hub. Ofcourse none of the networking diagrams I am looking at indicate you need a hub to make a mesh.

For the ring I may need special hardware like MSAU but these are for token rings are their any other types of ring networks other then token rings out their that don't need this special hardware?

Any advice would be great

 

[~Darkseeker~]

full-mesh topologies are done with switches or hubs rather than clients. you would need alot of beastly NICs to make a full mesh with only clients. Mesh topology is normally associated with the way countries are set up with ISPs and customers. you'd have to put a switch in each room, and connect the central switches to each client, and then to the other switches. Basically making a centralized star topology really.

 

[arsenalbates]

Bridges ?

 

[sam111]

full-mesh topologies are done with switches or hubs rather than clients. you would need alot of beastly NICs to make a full mesh with only clients. Mesh topology is normally associated with the way countries are set up with ISPs and customers. you'd have to put a switch in each room, and connect the central switches to each client, and then to the other switches. Basically making a centralized star topology really.

O, so are you saying that if you didn't want to use a bridge,switch or router then the only way to make a mesh from each computer would be to have a nic card installed for each computer on every computer.

So if I had 5 computers I would need 5 nic cards in each of the 5 computers making it 25 nic cards needed. If this is the case mesh topologies would only work in small number of computer enviroments since the number of pci slots for the nic cards would run out pretty fast.
Could you possible connect all the cat6 wires to a centralized 66Block and have some network software running on each machine to time slice when to send data down the line. Some sort of collision detection correction software...etc so that you could only need the one nic card for all the computers and the 66block connects them all together acting like a hub.

Question 2
for the ring topology is the only type of rings a token ring if so I would think the only way to build these is to have MSAU. If so then where can you buy these.