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 Windows NT TCP/IP Network Administration is a horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus. These arthropods aren't true crabs; they are similar to arachnids such as spiders, scorpions, and ticks. Fossils in Canada suggest that the horseshoe crab's relatives lived 520 million years ago; however, Limulus itself goes back a mere 20 million years.

Today, horseshoe crabs range from Maine south to the Yucatan. About 30 years ago, scientists from Johns Hopkins Medical School discovered that their blood contains a chemical known as Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL), which causes it to clot when exposed to endotoxins. LAL is now used to test the sterility of injected medicines and such devices as heart valves and kidney dialyzers. Healthy horseshoe crab are bled, loosing 20% of total volume, then returned to the water. Unlike human blood, horseshoe crab blood turns bluish when exposed to air because its oxygen-carrying molecule contains copper.

Horseshoe crabs achieve sexual maturity at 9 to 12 years of their 19-year lifespan. They spawn from late April through mid-August, most intensely on nights with a full or new moon. High tides provide additional protection to the females and eggs. Horseshoe crabs move from deep water to protected bays and inlets. At high tide the animals mate and the female deposits between 2 and 30 thousand eggs. The male fertilizes the eggs, which are covered by sand before ebb tide, when the pair returns to deeper water. Paula Carroll was the production editor for this book. TIPS Technical Publishing handled production services with Robert Kern as project manager. The illustrations were created in Macromedia Freehand 7.0 by Robert Romano. Edie Freedman designed the cover, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with QuarkXPress 3.32 using the ITC Garamond font. The inside layout was designed by Edie Freedman and modified by Nancy Priest and implemented in FrameMaker by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. Rachel Anderson of Archer Editorial copy edited the book, Karen Brown of Scriptorium Publishing Services, Inc. provided composition and indexing services, and Jill Greeson was the proofreader. This colophon was written by Sheryl Avruch.

Whenever possible, our books use a durable and flexible lay-flat binding, either RepKover™ or Otabind™. If the page count exceeds the maximum bulk possible for this type of binding, perfect binding is used.