Nikhil Sharma

Shannon McFarland, CCIE No. 5245, is a corporate consulting engineer for Cisco, working as a technical

consultant for enterprise IPv6 deployment and data center design with a focus on application deployment

and virtual desktop infrastructure. Over the last 16 years, he has worked on large-scale enterprise campus

and WAN/branch network design, data center design and optimization for Microsoft operating systems

and server applications, as well as design and optimization of virtual desktop infrastructure deployments.

For the past 10 years, Shannon has been a frequent speaker at IPv6 events worldwide (notably Cisco Live

[formerly Networkers]), IPv6 summits, and other industry events. He has authored many papers and Cisco

Validated Designs (CVD) on IPv6, IP Multicast, Microsoft Exchange, VMware View, and other applications,

as well as contributed to many Cisco Press books. Prior to his time at Cisco, Shannon worked as a

consultant for a value-added reseller and also as a network engineer in the healthcare industry. Shannon

lives with his wife and children in Castle Rock, CO.

Muninder Sambi, CCIE No. 13915, is a manager of product marketing for the Cisco Catalyst 4500/4900

series platform. As a product line manager, he is responsible for defining product strategies on the multibillion-

dollar Catalyst 4500 and 4900 series platforms, which include next-generation product architectures

both for user access in Campus and Server access in the Data Center. Prior to this role, Muninder

played a key role in defining the long-term Software and Services strategy for Cisco’s modular switching

platforms (Catalyst 6500 and 4500/4900 series) including a focus on IPv6 innovations. Some of these

innovations enabled dual-stack IPv6 deployments in large enterprise and service provider networks.

Muninder is also a core member of Cisco’s IPv6 development council. Muninder has represented Cisco as

part of multiple network design architecture reviews with large enterprise customers. Over the last 12+

years, Muninder has worked on multiple Enterprise Campus, WAN, and Data Center designs. Prior to

working at Cisco, Muninder worked as a network consultant for one of India’s leading network integrators

and was responsible for designing and implementing LAN, WAN, and hosted Data Center networks.

Muninder lives with his wife and children in Fremont, California.

Nikhil Sharma, CCIE No. 21273, is a technical marketing engineer at Cisco, where he is responsible for

defining new features, both hardware and software, for the Catalyst 4500 product line. Over the last 10

years, Nikhil has worked with various enterprise customers to design and troubleshoot both large and

midsize campus and data center networks.

Sanjay Hooda, CCIE No. 11737, is a technical leader at Cisco, where he works with embedded systems

and helps define new product architectures. His current focus areas include high availability and messaging

in large-scale distributed switching systems. Over the last 14 years, Sanjay’s experience spans various

areas, including SCADA (Supervisor Control and Data Acquisition), large-scale software projects, and

enterprise campus and LAN, WAN, and data center network design.