I consider this draft coverage-complete for the basic introduction I was aiming at. Suggestions from dtaht5 and jg have been incorporated where appropriate. Critique and correct, but try not to make it longer. I'm a bit unhappy about the length and may actually try to cut it. You will note that the description of network failure modes is somewhat broader than in jg's talk. So is the section on why QoS fails to address the problem. This is me putting on my system-architect head and doing original analysis; if you think I have misunderstood the premises or reasoned about them incorrectly, tell me. Please fix typos and outright grammatical errors. If you think you have spotted a higher-level usage problem or awkwardness, check with me before changing it. What you think is technically erroneous may be expressive voice. Explanation: Style is the contrast between expectation and surprise. Poets writing metric poetry learn to introduce small breaks in scansion in order to induce tension-and-release cycles at a higher level that will hold the reader's interest. The corresponding prose trick is to bend usage rules or change the register of the writing slightly away from what the reader unconsciously expects. If you try to "fix" these you will probably be stepping on an intended effect. So check first. (I will also observe that unless you are already an unusually skilled writer, you should *not* try to replicate this technique; the risk of sounding affected or just teeth-jarringly bad is high. As Penn & Teller puts it, "These stunts are being performed by trained, *professional* idiots.") Future directions: unless somebody stops me, I'm going to reorganize what wiki docs there are around this thing. The basic idea is to make this the page new visitors naturally land on *first*, with embedded hotlinks to the more specialized stuff. Explanation: Outlines and bulleted lists of stuff are deadly. They're great for reference, but they scream "too much; don't read" to people first trying to wrap their heads around a topic. Narrative introductions with hotlinks are both less threatening and more effective. The main reason they're not used more is that most people find them quite hard to write. I don't. If I decide I need to cut the length, I'll push some subsections down to linked subpages. I haven't learned Textile yet. I'll probably get to that this weekend. -- Eric S. Raymond