Fancier systems using a bus—like most versions of Ethernet and Corvus Systems’ popular micro network called Omninet—need a file server.
A file server can be a computer minus the keyboard and screen but with extra communications ports to help signals get in and out in a hurry. It’s connected to the hard disk, which stores and relays the electronic files that people send it. In some networks a file server can also be a regular computer simply assigned to the job.
With a server arrangement you’re always sharing files with the server rather than directly with other members of the network. The hard disk is between you and the machine you’re trying to reach.
By the way, if everyone must use software from the server, that means a very, very busy hard disk—and potentially slower running programs.
A Star
In star topology, the individual computers are at the points of a starlike layout of cables radiating from a file server.
If the server conks out, everyone in the network is out of luck. But then that could also happen in rare cases if a printed circuit board in a bus network became mischievous in the worst way.
Normally, computers on a star network can’t be more than perhaps 200 feet apart, and perhaps much less.
Corvus’s Constellation network uses the star.
Most multiuser systems—which I won’t call true networks—use the star arrangement to hook up the dumb terminals to their central brain.