Introduction

This is an unfinished book, but my hope is that you'llstill find something of value here. It's over 100 pages whenprinted, so I think it's likely that you'll find something ofinterest if your goal is to learn more about reliableInternet connectivity. (Although the book is unfinished, thisweb site should be consistent. I.e.,you shouldn't find broken links and the like.)

The outline is complete and you can see it in the Tableof Contents below. Much of the Preface is "real," but it also contains material intendedonly for editors to consider. The architecture part contains two partial chapters. Theystill contain some "fleshless outline," but I've tried tonearly complete the Policies forReliability chapter.

The other parts still exist largely in outline form. Theappearance of text in

program listing font

is a sign of bones in need of flesh.

I started writing this book because I noticed that I washearing a lot of the same questions over and over again. Iget a kick out of helping people use computers and networksand I thought writing a book might allow me to help morepeople than I could ever help one-on-one. I'd never written abook before and became aware of tools like DocBook and Xfig that wouldallow me to prepare the material so it could be presented asa book or website. Starting on a book seemed like a good wayto organize my thoughts in a consistent way that'd be usefulto others while allowing me a chance to gain familiarity withthese tools.

This was a "spare time" project for me, so I knew it'dget time only as long as it was more fun than work. I workedon it fairly hard in late 1999, completing about 100 pagesbefore Thanksgiving with a few hundred hours worked. (About1/2 of those pages are mostly complete and about 1/2 arestill in outline form.) There are also 28 figuresillustrating reliability connectivity issues.

I considered entering into a contract to complete thebook with a technical publisher, but rejected the ideabecause I thought it'd likely tip the balance more towardwork than fun. My pool of spare time was empty for the first8 months of 2000 so the project sat in mothballs. I'doccasinally give copies of the material to clients who seemedto benefit from it. Then in September, 2000, I decided tomake the material available as a web site under my copyrightso that it at least stood a chance of helping a wideraudience. (It certainly wasn't doing anybody any good justspinning around on my hard drive getting dizzy.) I have no plans to write more, so it sits here as search enginefodder for the unwitting web spider or surfer.

One final warning: most of thelinks below in the table of contents will lead you to pagesthat're nothing but outline. See the preface or the policychapter for something closer to finished material. The index might also be a place tostart if you're hunting for something in particular.