Quiz Entry - updated: 2026.07.14
When would you choose a hub-and-spoke WAN over a mesh WAN, and what is the trade-off?
Hub-and-spoke is cheaper and simpler to manage but funnels all traffic through one central site; mesh costs far more but gives high availability with no single bottleneck.
Both are valid WAN designs with opposite trade-offs:
| Topology | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Hub and Spoke | Few links, low administrative and physical cost; WAN version of a star | Branch sites cannot talk to each other except through the central site, which is a single point of failure |
| Mesh | High availability — every end system links directly to every other (each link is essentially a point-to-point link) | Administrative and physical costs can be significant because the number of links grows quickly |
Rule of thumb: Choose hub-and-spoke when cost matters and the central site is reliable; choose mesh when availability and direct site-to-site paths justify the expense.
Go deeper:
Mesh networking (Wikipedia) — spells out mesh's redundancy/self-healing benefit and why cable/cost grows rapidly with nodes — the core of the trade-off.- Star network (Wikipedia) — names the central hub as a single point of failure while noting its simplicity — the exact downside of hub-and-spoke.