Please correct me if I’m wrong, might have breathed in too many soap fumes.
Token Ring sends the packets to every node by passing it from one node and if that node is not the recipient it passes it on to the next node.
Memos were created the day before with a list of recipients then it was passed around till everyone on the list had read it.
That’s what I thought too unless the pic (left) literally is how cables are arranged??
My understanding was a shared medium (say, all computers in parallel on a single UTP), where they pass a virtual token “packet” that assigns the right to transmit while anyone receives if addressed, like a ball between kindergarteners sitting in a circle.
The pictured ring topology (left) makes it seem like everyone can only talk to a computer one over, which seems awful for efficiency and resilience, while the pictured star topology (right) introduces an authority figure (MAU is like a kindergarten teacher that decides who walks around and gives the ball to whichever child they think should speak next). Both seem inherently worse than Ethernet - left can be completely broken by disabling one or two nodes while the right one is just a switched network with less throughput.
There definitely are good reasons why Ethernet won out over token ring, but there are scenarios where token ring was better. Before modern bridges, Ethernet could struggle with collisions if a network were too highly utilized - especially if nodes were physically spread out.
As for the diagrams, it can sometimes be confusing when it’s not made clear what is being represented. Physical and logical topologies can be mixed star and bus and matched in different ways, and diagrams don’t always make clear to which they refer.