Eric A. Hall has been involved with computers and networking for over twenty years, both personally and professionally. He got his start in computers as a child by writing games in Basic on an IBM S/360 at his father?s office, and got his first real taste of distributed networking by running a FidoNet BBS node out of his home town in Nashville, TN. More recently, Eric has served as the Labs Director for Network Computing magazine (designing and managing two of their test centers), has worked for two Internet startups, and has designed and managed Fortune 500 networks. Eric continues to serve as an independent consultant for a variety of network-related companies, and continues to write for the trade press on occasion. Eric also tries to travel frequently, and has lived for extended periods on three of the seven continents.