What? You want more?

I am always pretty amazed when people email me, and say that they have bought and enjoyed the books I have written. I am also always surprised when they ask me to write more.

Writing books takes quite a while, somewhere between three and six months each. It's a long process, and has to be juggled between regular employment, my own studies and family life. But it is a rewarding process.

One very common request is for a book on QoS and Multicast, and this was planned, and started many moons ago, but it stalled as I concentrated on getting my own CCIE.

But the voices should not be ignored.

So far I have had requests via email (Ionut and Marino), LinkedIn (Noore) and Twitter (Mark) all asking if I intend to write a book on QoS, and it was part of my original plan, in fact, here is the intended releases, which actually includes Services, and the IGPs:

BGP, MPLS, and VPNs and NAT have already been released, and the CCNA book (now called CCNA and Beyond) will be released at the end of the month. The personal folder is just a few tax documents, it's not my memoirs of anything like that. The UNetLab Cookbook stalled as the guys keep changing it, and the new version is so much different to how it was when I started writing that book.

So the next volume in the series would have been/will be Multicast and QoS. The biggest issue, and perhaps the reason why I stopped writing it was that I could not make a proper Multicast server.

I think I have fixed this issue, as I found, whilst doing my CCIE Security studies, that SUSE Studio is a great way to create custom VMs, and get them in Qemu, which is ideal for UNetLab. So, that is a manageable hurdle.

The next issue is time management. Can I write another book at the same time as studying for my CCIE Security, and maintain a happy work/home life balance? Not sure the wife wants me to write another book at the moment, I think we could do with some "us" time.

So, what to do??
Well, I guess that's where you lot come in.

There is a poll on the menu to the right. I reckon 100 "yes's" should cover it. Leave a comment below. I'll probably ditch Kindle, or keep the Kindle price the same as the printed price. Kindle sales are not as good as printed, and I am actually quite happy about this. I much prefer printed textbooks.

The price would be about the same as the other books, but the platform would move to UNetLab. I havn't touched GNS3 since finishing VPNs and NAT.

The other question is would you support a Kickstarter project for this? If so, for how much and what would you want in return? I have seen other people doing Kickstarters for books, and I'd quite like to turn this into a full-time thing, but at present this is not feasible. Maybe a Kickstart project would be the way forward. I could do things like your name in the book, and so on.

If there is enough people who would like me to write it, then I will do it.

I won't give any timelines for it, but I would keep people updated via the website.

Let me know your thoughts via the poll and feedback below.

GNS3 vs. IOU poll - who won?

I have been running a poll on the site to determine whether people would prefer the next volume (Multicast and QoS) to be designed for IOU or, like the previous three volumes, for GNS3.

At the start, IOU steamed ahead, but then GNS3 started to catch up.

The poll has now closed. We had 67 people take part. The end result?

IOU won by a large margin.

If it had won by any more, then the pie chart would look like Pacman.

So the book will be designed for...
UNetLab.

Here's why.

1. On the basis that if people are using IOU, then they will have probably heard of UNetLab.
2. If people have IOU images in IOU, they can be used in UNetLab.
3. UNetLab offers support for more systems then IOU, therefore we can have a Linux VM and PROPERLY test multicast AND QoS.

The thing about Multicast (and QoS) that it is hard, in a closed environment such as IOU, or even when you are restricted to just using routers and switches, is that you have to take output as an indication of whether something is working or not. If you could actually see a multicast stream, i.e. a video file playing on VLC, then it's easier to see cause and effect.

UNetLab will allow for a nicer book, we'll be able to see video being multicasted, and also implement QoS restrictions on this as well, rather than just seeing an ICMP response. 

It'll be fun, as networking should be.