In today's evolving networking arena, the difficult task in writing a
book is to pre- sent the information in a timely manner. Although I have
tried to present the the- ory and practice of the technology to date,
still there may be some facts that are overlooked. This is due to the
time it takes from writing the manuscript to its pub- lication. However,
I do firmly believe the contents of this book are enormous and careful
readers will be able to apply them to their everyday work. My primary
objective is to share with the readership my learning and experience and
facilitate a thorough understanding of the most commonly used
internetworking technology that emphasizes practice rather than theory.
Therefore, the text can be considered as tutorial in nature. Following
recent trends, data and telecom technologies have been integrated into
one complex infrastructure of unified transport means, fueled by the
merger mania of dataltelecom giants. Such a unified information
transport mechanism has identified the reliable transfer of information
as an important factor for internet- working. As a result, a major part
of the industry has embraced IP (Internet proto- col) as the primary
transport means for information interchange. With the new ad- vent and
complexity of integrated networking, practitioners and users are more
overwhelmed than ever before. Hence, in this book, I have foIlowed the
industry trend in LAN (local area network) technologies and ended with a
practical guide to a unified solution.
