A multidrop bus connects multiple hardware components or terminals in parallel across the same set of physical wires. Because all devices share the transmission medium, they must use an arbitration protocol to determine which node has permission to send data at any given time. This topology reduces wiring complexity but limits overall bandwidth and introduces the risk of data collisions.
Heard on the job
We're using a multidrop RS-485 serial bus to poll all the environmental sensors in the server room.
Also heard as
- multipoint