Acknowledgments

From Umesh Lakshman:

Thanks to the Almighty God for his blessings and watching over me and helping me complete this undertaking successfully.

I would like to express my gratitude to my co-author, Mr. Lancy Lobo, for giving me the opportunity to help him in this endeavor. Thanks to the entire Cisco Press team whose guidance and diligence has enhanced this book. Thanks to Andrew Cupp for making sure the book content was delivered on time. Thanks to Raina Han for putting up with unforeseen delays during the initial writing phase and for coordinating the writing process. Special thanks to John Kane and Jim Schachterle for valuable guidance through the entire writing process.

Thanks to my manager of more than three years, Mr. Russell Tarpey, for enabling and supporting this undertaking, and for his constant encouragement.

I would like to recognize the technical reviewers, Eric Osborne, Alex Raj, Andy Schultz, and Raymond Zhang for their advice and attention to detail.

Thanks to the GSR VPLS team, namely Javed Asghar, Muhammad Waris Sagheer, and Leigh Hunt, for helping us with content and software to demonstrate VPLS on the GSR.

Thanks to John Klemm, Chad Frisby, and Yinglam Cheung from IXIA for helping us with equipment and guidance for Chapter 15. Thanks to Mike Haugh from Spirent Communications for his guidance with the Smartbits chassis and application. Thanks to Ryan Crawford from Agilent Technologies for supporting us with the N2X configuration. I would also like to thank my family in India for their support during the development of this book.

From Lancy Lobo:

I thank Lord Jesus for giving me this opportunity to write this book, for his blessings, and for being there for me always.

I would like to thank my manager, Andrew Houck, for supporting me in this book venture. I thank all the folks at Cisco Press, especially John Kane, Andrew Cupp, Raina Han, and Jim Schachterle, for their understanding and patience whenever we were late in submitting our chapters. I would like to thank all the technical reviewers for their suggestions and insights into several topics. I thank all the external vendor representatives from IXIA, Spirent, and Agilent for their support during this venture.

Finally, I would like to thank my co-author, Umesh Lakshman, for his efforts and his ability to concentrate and work on this book despite several personal crises that occurred during the writing of this book. This book wouldn't have been possible without his energy and enthusiasm.