My memory is that every ring topology had pretty nasty failure characteristics around "a single misbehaving/failing client." Which Ethernet has too, but can ge

My memory is that every ring topology had pretty nasty failure characteristics around "a single misbehaving/failing client." Which Ethernet has too, but can generally tolerate a much higher level of imperfect reality, while still providing degraded service. Before you could get plentiful high-quality NICs and cabling, graceful degradation was a killer feature.