  Restrictions imposed by existing infrastructure can make it hard to ensure an
even spacing between the nodes of future fiber-based quantum networks. We here
investigate the negative effects of asymmetric node placement by considering
separately the placement of midpoint stations required for heralded
entanglement generation, as well as of processing-node quantum repeaters in a
chain. For midpoint stations, we describe the effect asymmetry has on the time
required to perform one entangling attempt, the success probability of such
attempts, and the fidelity of the entangled states created. This includes
accounting for the effects of chromatic dispersion on photon
indistinguishability. For quantum-repeater chains we numerically investigate
how uneven spacing between repeater nodes leads to bottlenecks, thereby
increasing both the waiting time and the time states are stored in noisy
quantum memory. We find that while the time required to perform one entangling
attempt may increase linearly with the midpoint's asymmetry, the success
probability and fidelity of heralded entanglement generation and the
distribution time and error rate for repeater chains all have vanishing first
derivatives with respect to the amount of asymmetry. This suggests resilience
of quantum-network performance against small amounts of asymmetry.
