Acknowledgments

Although the author's name is the only one to appear on the cover, the combined effort of many people is required to produce a quality text book. First and foremost is the author's family, who put up with the long and weird hours that go into writing a book. Thank you once again, Sally, Bill, Ellen, and David.

The consulting editor, Brian Kernighan, is undoubtedly the best in the business. He was the first one to read various drafts of the manuscript and mark it up with his infinite supply of red pens. His attention to detail, his continual prodding for readable prose , and his thorough reviews of the manuscript are an immense resource to a writer.

Technical reviewers provide a different point of view and keep the author honest by catching technical mistakes. Their comments, suggestions, and (most importantly) criticisms add greatly to the final product. My thanks to Steve Bellovin, Jon Crowcroft, Pete Haverlock, and Doug Schmidt for comments on the entire manuscript. Equally valuable comments were provided on portions of the manuscript by Dave Borman, Tony DeSimone, Bob Gilligan, Jeff Gitlin, John Gulbenkian, Tom Herbert, Mukesh Kacker, Barry Margolin, Paul Mockapetris, Burr Nelson, Steve Rago, James Risner, Chris Walquist, Phil Winterbottom, and Gary Wright. A special thanks to Dave Borman for his thorough review of all the TCP chapters, and to Bob Gilligan who should be listed as a coauthor for Appendix E.

An author cannot work in isolation, so I would like to thank the following persons for lots of small favors, especially by answering my numerous e-mail questions: Joe Godsil, Jim Hogue, Mike Karels, Paul Lucchina, Craig Partridge, Thomas Skibo, and Jerry Toporek.

This book is the result of my being asked lots of questions on TCP/IP for which I could find no quick, immediate answer. It was then that I realized that the easiest way to obtain the answers was to run small tests, forcing certain conditions to occur, and just watch what happens. I thank Pete Haverlock for asking the probing questions and Van Jacobson for providing so much of the publicly available software that is used in this book to answer the questions.

A book on networking needs a real network to work with along with access to the Internet. My thanks to the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO), especially Sidney Wolff, Richard Wolff, and Steve Grandi, for providing access to their networks and hosts. A special thanks to Steve Grandi for answering lots of questions and providing accounts on various hosts . My thanks also to Keith Bostic and Kirk McKusick at the U.C. Berkeley CSRG for access to the latest 4.4BSD system.

Finally, it is the publisher that pulls everything together and does whatever is required to deliver the final product to the readers. This all revolves around the editor, and John Wait is simply the best there is. Working with John and the rest of the professionals at Addison-Wesley is a pleasure . Their professionalism and attention to detail show in the end result.

Camera-ready copy of the book was produced by the author, a Troff die-hard, using the Groff package written by James Clark. I welcome electronic mail from any readers with comments, suggestions, or bug fixes.

Tucson, Arizona

October 1993

W. Richard Stevens

rstevens@noao.edu

http://www.noao.edu/~rstevens