each quickring interface contained two such links, one for "upstream" and one for "downstream" connections in a point-to-point ring. since the system was not a bus, machines could talk up and downstream at the same time without interfering with other users. the drawback was that each hop over an intervening point added a latency of up to 1.3 µs. since quickring was built in a ring topology there was no need for a dedicated switch or router, potentially making the system lower cost to deploy. two rings could be connected together by putting the bus ic's "back to back" in a switch, allowing for larger networks.