Today, organizations are more dependent on their Cisco networks than ever before -- and their networks are growing ever more complex and interdependent. In this book, one of the world's leading network consultants shares practical, realistic techniques for maximizing reliability and availability in any network environment. This book discusses every leading approach to improving network availability, including key principles and tradeoffs -- guiding network professionals in choosing the most appropriate solutions for their own networks. Leading network consultant, Dr. Vincent Jones presents a series of common network scenarios, analyzes their weaknesses, and presents solutions -- demonstrating how to ensure that other services continue unaffected when parts of the network fail, and how to automate recovery. While the examples in the book are Cisco-focused, the principles and design tradeoffs apply to any contemporary router- or switch-based internetwork. For every network designer and administrator responsible for optimizing the reliability and availability of today's networks.