About the Authors

Kingston Smiler. S is a seasoned professional with 12 years of experience in software development and presales, encompassing wide range of skill set, roles, and industry verticals. He has solid expertise in data communication networking and software-based switching and routing solutions, and virtualization platforms such as OpenStack, OpenDaylight controller, Docker Containers, and CoreOS. He is currently working as an advisor and technical consultant for networking companies in the development of Layer2 and Layer3 IP protocols.

He also has working experience in building IoT sensor networks with IoT OSes such as RIOT and Contiki; SoCs such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Intel Galileo; and IoT protocols such as 802.14.5 (Zigbee), 6lowpan, RPL, CoAP, and MQTT. He is interested in building small-scale robots using Arduino and ROS Robotics platforms.

Active in various networking standard bodies such as IETF, IEEE, and ONF, Kingston has proposed two drafts in TRILL WG and one draft in MPLS WG of IETF. With the current surge in SDN, virtualization, and NFV, his primary focus is towards these areas. He completed a bachelor of engineering degree in computer science from Madras University.

Kingston is also the author of OpenFlow Cookbook, Packt Publishing.

First and foremost, I would like to thank the lord to give me immense confidence and energy to start and complete this book successfully. I want to thank my kids, mother, brother, sister, and all my other family members for their support and encouragement. Thanks to my coauthor Shantanu Agrawal who helped me finish the book on time. Thanks to Shali and Divya for their reviews and helping me to finish this book despite their busy schedule. Special thanks to my wife for her patience and support in bringing up this book as most part of the book was written on weekends, at night, and during vacations.

Shantanu Agrawal has over 15 years of experience in the telecom industry working in systems having high transaction rates with scalable architectures. He has extensive experience of consulting for solutions, designing, and implementing high-performing and highly available software. He has exposure to the complete life cycle of the product development and deployment challenges. During his journey, he has worked on different hardware platforms and operating systems, such as proprietary UNIX-based hardware, embedded systems with real-time operating systems, Linux, Solaris, and so on. He has experience in the core network elements and protocols used in GSM/UMTS/LTE networks. He graduated from IIT BTU and did post-graduation from BITS Pilani.

I would thank my family for allowing me to squeeze their time for this book and for being understanding. I would also want to thank my coauthor Kingston Smiler for driving this to completion and for his excellent contributions.