How This Book Came to Be

After spending two years on the first edition of this book, I was relieved to finally have the book done. However, Check Point played a cruel trick on me and released FireWall-1 NG around the same time that my book came out in October 2001. That book was mostly on FireWall-1 4.1, so my book was already obsolete! People kept asking me, "So when are you going to update your book for NG?"

Another thing happened right around that time: My wife and I decided to move to the Seattle area from Spokane and build a new house. We had to live in a much smaller apartment for several months until the house was completed.

After moving twice and finally finding the motivation to do this again, I began the task of turning Essential Check Point FireWall-1 into Essential Check Point FireWall-1 NG in July 2002. Unlike the last attempt at this, I knew this was going to be a solo project. This didn't bother me. After all, I did it once.