I/O ports (input/output Ports)

Definition 1:
I/O ports or Input/output Ports are located at the back side of CPU. Ports are connections points. To these ports we attach key board, mouse etc.

Definition 2:
I/O ports For communicating with peripheral devices the processor uses I/O ports. There are only two operations with the external world possible, read or write. Similarly with I/O ports the processor can read or write an I/O port. When an I/O port is read or written to, the operation is not as simple as it happens in memory.

I/O ports in Computer Networking:

I/O ports stands for input/output ports. In any topology workstations are connected to server or hub by these ports. So that they can request/send data to server as input and can order/receive data from server as output.

Difference between Links and I/O Ports?

Firstly, any thing that physically connects two devices is called Link. For example, a wire (Twisted Pair) connecting two devices acts as a link between two devices.

Secondly, Port is an interface on a computer to which you can connect the input and output devices of your computer. Computers come with multiple ports for connecting mouse, keyboard, monitor, printer and USB etc. Similarly, there are some network ports which are used to connect a computer with other computer or network related devices. For example: Ethernet Port.

So, link is the cable connecting two devices and the port is the interface where you insert the cable in order to connect two devices.


"n" in Mesh Topology:
Here in mesh topology "n" is used for nodes. Mean total number of computers in network, including server. As server is doing all processing and send required data to workstations and output will be showed on these work stations so I/O ports will be one less than total number of computers in the network. So if total number of workstations will 5 then i/p ports will be 5,bt in this case there will be 6 nodes including server.