RICHARD BLUM is a networking computer specialist for the U.S. Department of Defense. He is responsible for managing a 3500+ user network that contains Novell(R), UNIX(R), and Windows(R) servers along with a remote mainframe connectivity. He has managed many types of network monitoring programs and has written network monitoring and client/server programs using C, C++, Java(TM), and C#. Blum is also the author of several computer books.