 book is in large part, a reflection of experience and knowledge accumulated over the course of 30+ years conceiving, designing, proposing, selling, build- ing, operating, breaking, and fixing equipment, software, systems, and networks. This experience is about evenly divided between broadcast and communications systems. In December 1982, after 15 years at RCA's Broadcast Systems Div- ision, I transferred to a new job in RCA's Communications Group. In the same month, AT&T and the US Department of Justice entered into a consent decree that fractured the company into independent Local Exchange and Inter-Exchange Carrier companies. The era of Ma Bell would be no more. Over the next few years with RCA and a small business I owned, I designed and built corporate networks with local and long distance voice and high-speed data communications capability. I was fortunate to work with some of the early voice processing systems with auto-attendant, data collection, and voice mail networking capabilities. MCI hired me to work in its International Network Engineering Group in 1991. My job was to design and build a mainframe based computer tool that could be used by finance, engineering, and marketing to plan and manage the company's investments and inter- est in undersea fiber cable systems. I knew very little about main- frame computer systems or database management software, but I knew digital communications networks very well, had significant knowledge of international commerce, and was quite willing to learn about data base manger technology. INTRODUCTION During the course of the next 11 1/2 years, I was fortunate to work with a range of technologies and systems reflective of the convergence of content and communications networks in the emerging Internet en- vironment. Working through this period gave me opportunities to learn from experts with knowledge of both fields in a real hands-on experience. This learning experience continually crossed between relating what I knew as well as digging in and learning from others who