word processing application that allows you to create a variety

of documents, including letters, resumes, and more. In this lesson, you'll

learn how to navigate the Word interface and become familiar with some of
its most important features, such as the Ribbon, Quick Access Toolbar,
and Backstage view.

The Ribbon
Word uses a tabbed Ribbon system instead of traditional menus.
The Ribbon contains multiple tabs, which you can find near the top of the
Word window.

The Ruler
The Ruler is located at the top and to the left of your document. It makes it
easier to adjust your document with precision. If you want, you can hide the
Ruler to create more screen space.

Backstage view
Backstage view gives you various options for saving, opening a file, printing,
and sharing your document. To access Backstage view, click the File tab on
the Ribbon.
Export

From here, you can export your document in another file format, such as PDF/XPS.

Account

From the Account pane, you can access your Microsoft account information, modify your theme and
background, and sign out of your account.

Options
Here, you can change various Word options. For example, you can control the spelling and grammar
check settings, AutoRecover settings, and language preferences.

Network Topology
Computers in a network have to be connected in some logical manner. The layout pattern of the
interconnections between computers in a network is called network topology. You can think of
topology as the virtual shape or structure of the network. Network topology is also referred to as
'network architecture.'
Devices on the network are referred to as 'nodes.' The most common nodes are computers and
peripheral devices. Network topology is illustrated by showing these nodes and their connections
using cables. There are a number of different types of network topologies, including point-to-point,
bus, star, ring, mesh, tree and hybrid. Let's review these main types.
Point-to-Point
Point-to-point topology is the simplest of all the network topologies. The network consists of a
direct link between two computers. This is faster and more reliable than other types of connections
since there is a direct connection. The disadvantage is that it can only be used for small areas where
computers are in close proximity.

Bus
Bus topology uses one main cable to which all nodes are directly connected. The main cable acts
as a backbone for the network. One of the computers in the network typically acts as the computer
server. The first advantage of bus topology is that it is easy to connect a computer or peripheral
device. The second advantage is that the cable requirements are relatively small, resulting in lower
cost.
One of the disadvantages is that if the main cable breaks, the entire network goes down. This type of
network is also difficult to troubleshoot. For these reasons, this type of topology is not used for large
networks, such as those covering an entire building.

Star
In star topology, each computer is connected to a central hub using a point-to-point connection.
The central hub can be a computer server that manages the network, or it can be a much simpler
device that only makes the connections between computers over the network possible.
Star topology is very popular because the startup costs are low. It is also easy to add new nodes to
the network. The network is robust in the sense that if one connection between a computer and the
hub fails, the other connections remain intact. If the central hub fails, however, the entire network
goes down. It also requires more cable than bus topology and is, therefore, more expensive.

Ring
In ring topology, the computers in the network are connected in a circular fashion, and the data
travels in one direction. Each computer is directly connected to the next computer, forming a single
pathway for signals through the network. This type of network is easy to install and manage.

A mesh topology is one where we have multiple links they are going to exactly the same place. You sometimes hear
this referred to as a fully-connected network. This provides you with some advantages from a connectivity
perspective. You’ve got redundancy and fault tolerance built in.

If you lose a connection, you’ve got multiple links. You can simply use the other connections to get around the
problem. And you also have the ability to do load balancing over some of these connections. With multiple links, now
you have twice as much bandwidth available to send your data back and forth.

It’s very common to see a meshed network on a wide area network. We see fully meshed and partially meshed
networks this way, so that you can connect some sites via multiple connections, some sites to be a single connection.
And blend together differences on how you want to be able to connect between point A and point B.

We still see ring technologies used in many places. You usually don’t see it in the local area network any longer.
Token ring is when you don’t often see any longer. But if you ever go into the back infrastructure in some of these
legacy devices, you may still see token ring equipment powered on and sending data between a couple of devices
that have to be there to keep the business running.

Where you commonly see a ring network then is in larger networks. Things like your metropolitan area network and
your wide area networks will use rings because you have fault tolerance there. If someone is working on the road and
they accidentally break one of those connections, you’ve still got connectivity that you can use to circle around the
other direction, because everyone is connected in a single ring.

A bus topology was extremely common to see an early ethernet networks. It’s one we really don’t see much any
longer. But it allowed us to take a single coaxial cable and extend it from one end of the building to the other and
simply connect everybody into that one piece of coax.

The problem obviously with that is if you have a break anywhere along this connection, then it’s broken for everyone
who’s on the network. And you have a connectivity problem at that point.

We don’t see bus networks around much longer. But if you look into the wall connectors, sometimes you’ll see the
remnants of an old coax network still sitting in there from the days when we used to use those bus-based ethernet
networks.

The vast majority of local area networks use a star topology to be able to communicate. Everyone on the network is
out and connected to a single concentrator or switch that might be in the middle. Everyone’s connected into the same
device or a series of devices, for redundancy. But you can see it’s a star, because everybody is connected into that
central device. Nobody’s really connected directly to one another. This is very common to see in switched ethernet,
where everybody’s connected to a very, very large switch in the middle of the building or on the floor of the building
and you simply have that one device sitting in the middle of everything.

A hybrid topology is one where we’ve taken multiple types of topologies and we’ve simply combined them together.
It’s very common to see this in most environments. You’re almost always going to use multiple topology types to
connect your networks. In fact you might have an ethernet network that’s in your core that is a star network but to
connect out to your remote sites, you’ve created a mesh wide area network.

Using this combination of topologies allows you a lot of flexibility. And if you’re planning a network, this will be a very,
very common way to lay out the structure of your network.