Join (topology)

Imagine you have a bunch of friends, and each friend lives in their own house. Now, if you want to have a party and invite all your friends, you have a few options. One option is to send an invitation to each friend individually, telling them when and where the party will be. Another option is to choose one friend to be the "party house," and everyone else goes to that house for the party.

In computer networking, a "join" topology is kind of like choosing one friend's house to be the party house. Instead of each computer on a network communicating with every other computer individually, they all connect to a central hub or switch. This hub or switch then forwards any data or messages to the correct computer.

Think of the hub or switch as the party house, and the computers on the network as your friends. Instead of each computer having to send a message to every other computer, they just send it to the hub or switch, and it takes care of sending it to the right place.

This kind of topology can be very efficient for networks with a lot of computers that need to communicate with each other regularly. It also makes it easy to add new computers to the network - they just need to connect to the hub or switch, instead of having to set up a direct connection to every other computer.