Aaron Brown wrote:
A question still open is the definition of "connected"? Is it a literal connected graph, or does it mean connected such that folks could actually somehow make circuits to get from any point in the graph to any other point (ignoring how they know that reservations and the like can happen)?
For example, say someone has a switch with sonet ports and ethernet ports and that switch connects to two other nodes, one via ethernet and one via sonet. Is the implication that the node connected via ethernet can connected to the node connected by SONET? If not, is that a connected graph for these purposes, or are there two separate topologies (the SONET one and the Ethernet one)?
Very good point. Thanks. I'm also puzzled about the topology definition:
- Topology: A connected graph of Network Elements The intended usage of this is to describe the thing that a network provider advertises to others as his network topology that is available for use.
I do not know what a "graph of Network Elements" is. My question is the same as Aaron's: is a network with two (physically connected) devices (a Ethernet and a SONET device) one or two graphs? The answer presumably depends on how the (connected) Network Elements are mapped onto a graph: as a graph representation of physical devices; a graph representation of abstracted or logical devices; (multiple) graphs for each logical layer? Instead of going in loops to define the word "graph", I would suggest to simply remove the word graph from the definition:
- Topology: A connected set of Network Elements
Regards, Freek