The previous edition of this book included the first 88 of these two-magazine-page overviews of technical networking topics, running monthly from August 1988 until December 1995. I remember thinking at the time I compiled them just how fresh many of them had managed to remain after as much as seven years.

After five more years, years that encompassed a great many major changes in the networking field, many of the early tutorials no longer seem fresh at all. In fact, reading some of them again was like opening a time capsule. A few (Twisted Pair FDDI) I've jettisoned altogether, although they're still on the Web site for serious nostalgia junkies. A few (Which Fast LAN?) I've left because they're historically interesting, even if they're barely relevant to a network manager nowadays. And a few others I've slapped a fresh coat of paint over, taking out the most obvious bad market predictions, updating references to their 21st century equivalents, and correcting mistakes I failed to catch the last time around.

Incidentally, the 4th Edition of the Network Tutorial follows the 3rd Edition of the LAN Tutorial because we changed the name of the magazine in 1997. For better or worse, no one would admit to actually having a LAN in the late 1990s if you didn't have an Intranet you might as well throw in the towel. Now "Intranet" is beginning to have a moldy ring to it, though I must admit I never warmed up to the term and have tried...