Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal on the cover of Managing IP Networks with Cisco Routers is a donkey, or ass. Relatives of horses, today's domesticated asses are descendants of the African wild ass, making them the only domesticated animal, with the possible exception of the cat, with origins in Africa. Wild asses have been kept as beasts of burden since ancient times, and by 2500 B.C. domestic asses were depicted in Egyptian art.

Donkeys make excellent beasts of burden for several reasons. They are capable of very sure footing, and can live in mountainous areas. Unlike most animals, donkeys can survive on brackish water. And, despite their reputations for stubborness, they often have placid dispositions. To enhance their natural qualifications, asses can be bred with horses, producing either a mule (a cross between a jackass and a mare) or a hinny (a cross between a jenny ass and a stallion). These hybrid offspring are always sterile. ... Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font. Whenever possible, our books use RepKoverTM, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.

The inside layout was designed by Edie Freedman and Nancy Priest and imple mented in FrameMaker 5.0 by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 7.0 by Robert Romano. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.