What are the advantages and disadvantages of layered architecture in a network

The advantages of layered architecture in a network are:

Ø Layered architecture enables teams to work on different parts of the application parallely with minimal dependencies on other teams.

Ø Layered architecture enables develop loosely coupled systems.

Ø Different components of the application can be independently deployed, maintained, and updated, on different time schedules.

Ø Layered architecture also makes it possible to configure different levels of security to different components deployed on different boxes.

Ø Layered architecture also helps you to test the components independently of each other.

The disadvantages of layered architecture in a network are:

Ø There might be a negative impact on the performance as we have the extra overhead of passing through layers instead of calling a component directly. 

Ø Development of user-intensive applications can sometime take longer if the layering prevents the use of user interface components that directly interact with the database.

Ø The use of layers helps to control and encapsulate the complexity of large applications, but adds complexity to simple applications.

Ø Changes to lower level interfaces tend to percolate to higher levels, especially if the relaxed layered approach is used.