Topologie

PROFINET supports several physical topologies: star (via switches), line (daisy-chain through ports integrated in the devices) and ring (with MRP for redundancy), and they may be combined within the same network.

In TIA Portal, the expected topology can be downloaded into the PROFINET PLC; at start-up the PLC compares the actual topology (discovered via LLDP) against the expected one and raises an alarm if they differ, which makes cabling errors automatically detectable.

LoRaWAN uses a "star-of-stars" topology: each end device transmits unidirectionally toward ALL in-range gateways, the gateways forward the packet to the Network Server, which deduplicates the copies; there is no mesh between end devices.