Joel Snyder is a senior partner with Opus One, a consulting firm in Tucson, Arizona. He spends most of his time on the road helping people build larger, faster, better, and more reliable networks. His professional travels have taken him from San Francisco to St. Petersburg, where he always carries his trusty Macintosh and modem, neither of which have cute names.

Joel has been working with networks since 1980, when he signed on with CompuServe Research and Development, and has been a member of the ISO and ITU committees which write network standards for over a decade. He has authored several books, over one hundred articles for technical publications and has been a network consultant since 1984. At home, his 100 Mbps Ethernet network hasrun almost any protocol you can think of—except SNA and token ring, mostly for religious reasons.

Snyder’s baccaulureate degree is in Latin, and his PhD is in Management Information Systems. His dissertation is on computer networks in the former Soviet Union. Almost everything he wrote in graduate school is now classified and he’s not allowed to read it anymore, which is good because it wasn’t very interesting to begin with. His favorite color Crayola crayon is Burnt Sienna.

Joel is an internationally known expert in the area of telecommunications and networks. His thesis, from the University of Arizona’s Department of Management Information Systems, analyzed the development, use, and technologies of computer networks in the former Soviet Union.

As a consultant with many years of experience, Snyder has written compilers, data management applications, conferencing systems, VLSI layout applications, and network software; designed and implemented information systems for clients as small as a two-person brokerage house and as large as NASA; and built network systems for clients from Munich to Los Angeles.