As someone who works for a major Bell company product managing a metro Ethernet product, I can tell you that Shepard examines the activity in this space perfectly. MANs are the hot area right now, as carriers cope with how to address the bottleneck that exists between legacy transport technologies (i.e. DS-n) and the near-infinite capacity of today's long-haul networks (thanks to DWDM). If you're looking for an understanding of how this area is being addressed, this is the right book. And Steve's usual conversational, not-too-technical writing style make it all the better. I strongly recommend this book. It's relevant !!