A network 's logical topology is not necessarily the same as its physical topology . For example , twisted pair Ethernet is a logical bus topology in a physical star topology layout . The physical distributed bus topology is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a physical tree topology â `` however , although the physical distributed bus topology resembles the physical tree topology , it differs from the physical tree topology in that there is no central node to which any other nodes are connected , since this hierarchical functionality is replaced by the common bus .