Wendell Odom, CCIE No. 1624, is the best selling author of Cisco certification books and other related products.
Wendell has worked in a variety of job roles over the years. He began at IBM, starting while a student at Ga Tech, writing code to control network operations. He has worked as a network engineer, pre-sales engineer, post-sales support, consultant, instructor, and author.
He first entered the world of TCP/IP back in 1990, when TCP/IP began to replace proprietary protocols in corporate networks, supporting IBM's new TCP/IP products, routers, and LAN products while still at IBM. He moved away from IBM into the Cisco world by the mid 90's, teaching many different Cisco authorized courses for Cisco training partners, including courses on routing, switching, SNA, ATM, MPLS, WAN switching, load balancing, and QoS. He passed the CCIE R/S lab in 1995.
Wendell first entered the Cisco certification content world back in 1998 in response to Cisco's introduction of the CCNA R/S and CCNP R/S certifications. Since that time, he has alternated between a few different job roles, but he has kept writing books, and now writes full time.
As for books, Wendell has has worked alongside Cisco Press, a publishing alliance between Cisco Systems® (NASDAQ: CSCO) and the Pearson Education division of Pearson plc (NYSE: PSO).Over the years, he has written books from the entry-level CCENT through CCIE, books for the Cisco Networking Academy, general networking technology books, textbooks, plus other learning products. He's written all editions of the best-selling CCENT and CCNA R/S Cert Guides, as well as consulting on the design of the CCNA Network Simulator.