In the design of small and medium-sized campus networks, when branches need to communicate with each other and the number of branches is large (more than a hundred), which of the following…

Question

Options

• AFull-Mesh (full interconnection) networking
• BHub-Spoke networking
• CPartial-Mesh (partial interconnection) networking
• DDirect networking

• A
  2% (1)
• B
  2% (1)
• C
  85% (35)
• D
  10% (4)

Explanation

Partial-Mesh (C) strikes the optimal balance for large branch deployments: it connects critical nodes directly while routing other traffic through intermediary nodes, dramatically reducing the number of required connections compared to full interconnection. With 100+ branches, Full-Mesh (A) becomes impractical - the required connections scale as n(n−1)/2, meaning 100 branches would need ~4,950 links, making it prohibitively expensive and complex to manage. Hub-Spoke (B) is too fragile at scale - all traffic flows through a central hub, creating a single point of failure and a bandwidth bottleneck that degrades performance as branch count grows. Direct networking (D) is typically used for simple point-to-point links between just two sites, not multi-branch topologies.

Memory tip: Think of it as the "Goldilocks" rule - Full-Mesh is too many connections, Hub-Spoke is too few (and fragile), Direct is for tiny setups, but Partial-Mesh is just right for large, real-world campus networks where you need resilience without runaway cost.

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