Acknowledgments

As usual, Brett Bartow, executive editor, deserves thanks for allowing me to be involved with this book. Brett continually keeps an eye on the horizon for the right projects for me, essentially completing a run of books from the basics, to CCENT, CCNA, now CCNP, and CCIE. My work life wouldn’t be possible without Brett keeping me pointed in the right direction. Thanks, Brett!

Jay Swan and Michelle Plumb did a nice job for us with technical edits of the book. Jay was particularly helpful with both ends of the tech edit spectrum, noticing specific and easy-to-overlook errors, while keeping an eye out for the big picture of how the text in one section impacted other sections. Michelle’s diligent work helped us uncover several specific issues and make this a better book. Thanks to you both for helping make this book much better!

Rick Graziani deserves thanks with this book for several reasons. First, Rick wrote the questions on the CD with this book, a task that can be laborious—but Rick did a great job and with a positive outlook. Additionally, Rick gave us an additional set of experienced and thoughtful technical editor eyes on the BGP chapters. And while he was working on the CD questions, Rick gladly went the extra mile to point out technical edits to the other book chapters as well. Rick’s great attitude toward helping with the book was very impressive.

Dayna Isley worked as the development editor for this book. Dayna and I have worked very well together for a long time, and having such a trusted editor look over every word on this new book has helped quite a bit. Dayna’s attention to detail helps keep me on the authoring straight-and-narrow, this time while navigating a sometimes fluid set of processes. Dayna, thanks for sifting through this process and making me look good on paper!

Patrick Kanouse, managing editor, led us through many new production tools (WriteRAP) and processes. Additionally, Patrick happily agreed to continue several additional production tasks at my request (translated: more work for him and his team), while allowing me to manage the entire illustration process for the first time on one of my books—none of which he had to do. Patrick, thanks for your great attitude and willingness to work with me on so many extras.

The folks on Patrick’s production team probably had the biggest challenge with this book compared to my other books. Mandie Frank worked as project editor, guiding the book through the various back-end processes to complete the book. Mandie got to sift though all the changing processes, help figure out when we were doing which tasks, and keep us all on track. Thanks, Mandie! San Dee Phillips retired last year so she could work even more, coming back to do the copyedit work—thanks for jumping in again, San Dee! And for Mark Shirar, Ken Johnson, and Barbara Hacha, doing the composition, indexing, and proofreading, thanks so much for handling these details—I do see the difference with having professionals working on every step of the book creation process, and I do appreciate the results.

Thanks to Rich Bennett, good friend and part-time do-everything guy for my books and other projects. Thanks for doing all the Illustrator drawings and editing them all so many times!

The old expression “my better half” is lived out every day here at the Odom house in the person of my wife Kris. Many thanks to Kris, who listens when I need to talk through something in the book, and lets me go hide in the basement for a few weeks to meet the latest writing deadline. Thanks, doll!

Finally and foremost, many thanks to Jesus Christ, for demonstrating your love, and for helping me and my family learn better each day how to not be a clanging symbol, but instead to show others your love.