Acknowledgments

First of all, I'd like to express sincere thanks to Scott Sturgess for providing timely contributions to Chapters 7 and 8, helping to make the project deadline. Scott also reviewed some of the other chapters. The editorial team at Cisco Press was phenomenal, and many folks worked hard on various aspects of the book to bring it to fruition. I'd like to sincerely thank every one of them and also mention the following individuals with whom I interacted the most: Alicia Buckley encouraged me to take up the project; Tracy Hughes was always ready to forgive me yet another time whenever I fell behind schedule. Writing part-time was very challenging, and Tracy's extreme patience and understanding was very helpful. Many thanks to John Kane for his mentorship and also to Howard Jones and San Dee Phillips for their enthusiasm and thoroughness in reviewing the manuscripts.

The technical reviewers, Thomas Kramer and Blair Buchanan, were fantastic; and although their tough reviews compelled me to work harder and longer than I expected, I count myself very lucky to have had their knowledge and experience at my disposal! I wish to thank them for their time and great feedback for improving the text, and for making me a better writer.

Henk Smit influenced my interest in IS-IS while he was at Cisco as an IS-IS protocol development engineer, and I'd like to thank him for his tutorials and insights during our many interactions when I was a support engineer. I also want to acknowledge Henk's significant contributions to the enhancement of the IS-IS protocol while at Cisco Systems and as a current active participant in the IETF's IS-IS Working Group.

I'd like to thank several individuals, professional colleagues, and friends within and outside of Cisco Systems who have been resourceful and supportive in diverse ways, either throughout this project, or have generally helped shape my career. They are named in random order as follows : Jeff Zirker, Tony Bates, Bala Nagesh, Richard Harvey, Praveen Akkiraju, Chris Whyte, Ferdinand Sales, Scott Yow, Niklas Montin, Kevin Macaluso, Jean Nicolas, Heba Ibrahim, Hassan Kassem, Sampson Asiedu, Sandra Bell, Bill Ware, Tom Snyder, Bob Collet, Rob Saileanu, and many others. To all my many former colleagues in the Cisco TAC, thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge and expertise.

Finally, I'd like to express gratitude and love to my family for supporting this effort and for enduring many evenings and weekends without me, when I engulfed myself in this project. Thanks again for all the love, caring, and support!

Abe Martey