Do you know of any modern copper wire networking technologies that uses a bus, ring, tree, or daisy chain topology? The only thing I can think of is IEEE 1394 firewire, however, that's not even an "official" networking technology. What happened to all the alternative topologies?

I'm trying to brainstorm ways to connect 100+ Computer On Module devices inside a 2U server chassis, using star topology ethernet is going to require a lot of PCB traces on the backplane. Is there some mythical networking bus that can connect all of them with just a few wires?

Token ring lost out to ethernet.

At least one person thinks that token ring was superior, but lost out the ethernet on cost, sort of how like VHS beat out Beta video cassetts.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/cla...se-token-ring/

You could likely make token ring work if you could find the hardware. (Note: the link below was written in 2002.)

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Token-Ring/hardware.html

(This brought back memories. I once attended a presentation on token ring by a management trainee at my workplace; part of their requirements was to delve into something and educate others about it. It must have been in the early 80s about the time token ring was first rolled out; it was on token ring.)