Acknowledgments

It is my pleasure to be involved in writing another Cisco Press book. Technical writing, for me, is great fun, although writing large books is hard work. The good folks at Cisco Press provided a wealth of help during the writing process. In particular, I'm very grateful to have worked with my friends Brett Bartow and Chris Cleveland yet again. They are amazing at what they do, and I'm very appreciative! In addition, I'm grateful to Sheila Schroeder for her tireless and patient work fine-tuning the final product.

I would like to acknowledge the hard work and good perspective of the technical reviewers: Randy Ivener, Terry Ratzlaff, and Larry Roberts. I have benefited from their knowledge and their willingness to investigate topics when I've been stumped. I believe this has become a more accurate and well-rounded book thanks to them. I'm especially grateful to Randy for taking on a second technical review to address the large amount of new material added to the text for the PIX 7.x software release.

Several people have gone out of their way to provide hardware for testing, evaluation, and book development: Mike Park and Mark Macumber (my local Cisco account team), Bruce Galler and Ryan Springer (my PIX 7.x beta support team), and Lowell Pike (keeper of the APElab). Without these kind offers, I would not have been able to complete this book.

I would also like to thank the many people on the PIX 7.x development team who have offered me their help and knowledge: Bruce Galler, Ryan Springer, Jason Nolet, Nishant Jadhav, Steve DeJarnett, Dieter Weber, Wayne Kao, Omar Santos, Jazib Frahim, and Tom Lin. Many others have added to this project but have remained anonymous, only because Betasphere refused to reveal their names.

Several TAC and systems engineers who have helped me with questions along the way should also be acknowledged: Alison Badger, Raffaele Brancaleoni, Sonia Torres Chavez, Roy McDonald, Jeffrey Lin, Eduardo Montero, Ka Wai Ng, Daniel Tran, Kevin Turek, and Mark Trojanowski.

Finally, without the help of some good friends, I would be stuck on many fronts. Brent Salisbury, Rob Tudor, Melvin Norouzisani, and Steve Daleo were helpful resources on many occasions.