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About the Authors
Mike Flannagan, CCIE No. 7651, is a manager in the High Touch Technical Support (HTTS) group at Cisco Systems
in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Mike joined Cisco in 2000 as a network consulting engineer in the Cisco
Advanced Services group, where he led the creation and deployment of the QoS Virtual Team. As a member of the QoS
Virtual Team, Mike was involved with the development of new QoS features for Cisco IOS and developed QoS strate-
gies and implementation guidelines for some of the largest Cisco enterprise customers. Mike teaches QoS classes and
leads design clinics for internal and external audiences and is the author of Administering Cisco QoS for IP Networks,
published by Syngress.
Richard Froom, CCIE No. 5102, is a software and QA engineer for the Financial Test Lab at Cisco Systems in
Research Triangle Park. Richard joined Cisco in 1998 as a customer support engineer in the Cisco Technical Assistance
Organization. Richard, as a customer support engineer, served as a support engineer troubleshooting customers’ net-
works and as a technical team lead. Being involved with Catalyst product field trials, Richard has been crucial in driving
troubleshooting capabilities of Catalyst products and software. Currently, Richard is working with the Cisco storage net-
working products. Richard earned his bachelor of science degree in computer engineering at Clemson University.
Kevin Turek, CCIE No. 7284, is currently working as a network consulting engineer in the Cisco Federal Support
Program in Research Triangle Park. He currently supports some of the Cisco Department of Defense customers. Kevin
is also a member of the internal Cisco QoS virtual team, supporting both internal Cisco engineers and external Cisco
customers with QoS deployment and promoting current industry best practices as they pertain to QoS. Kevin earned
his bachelor of science degree in business administration at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
About the Technical Reviewers
Jason Cornett is a customer support engineer at Cisco Systems, where he is a technical leader for the LAN Switching
team in Research Triangle Park. Jason joined Cisco in 1999 and has a total of five years of networking experience. He
holds a diploma in business technology information communications systems from St. Lawrence College. Previously
Jason was a network support specialist with a network management company.
Lauren L. Dygowski, CCIE No. 7068, is a senior network engineer at a major financial institution and has more than
eight years of networking experience. He holds a bachelor of science degree in computer science from Texas Tech Uni-
versity and a M.S.B.A. from Boston University. Previously, Lauren was a network manager with the United States
Marine Corps and MCI. He resides with his wife and three sons in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Balaji Sivasubramanian is part of the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) based out of Research Triangle Park, where
he acts as the worldwide subject matter expert in LAN technologies. He has been with Cisco TAC for more than three
years. He has authored and reviewed many technical white papers on Cisco.com in the LAN technologies area. He has
been a presenter/moderator of the Technical Virtual Chalk Talk Seminars for Partners. He has actively participated in
early field trial testing of the Catalyst 4000/4500 platform series. Balaji holds a master of science degree in computer
engineering from the University of Arizona and holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering.