Eric Peabody is president of Business Network Services, a company dedicated to enhancing customer competitiveness through electronic communications.

Eric is a 17-year veteran of the computer industry. Sixteen of those years were spent with IBM. There, Eric handled a variety of assignments, from hardware design to process development, from quality engineering to software development. Those experiences gave a depth of knowledge "from sand to systems." For the past 8 years, Eric has specialized in distributed software systems and network technology - especially internetworking. In fact, he designed and implemented the first TCP/IP-based network to perform production work within IBM. Following that, he directed research and development projects with Yale and the University of Maryland to produce several networking products with IBM. Subsequently, he developed an implementation of the Point-to-Point Protocol, a standard way for computers to communicate over telecommunication lines, which was used on the Internet backbone routers and included in the IBM 6611 router product. Since that time, he has developed distributed systems used in the manufacturing production of IBM RS/6000 workstations.

Leaving IBM to form Business Network Services, Eric Peabody furthered his interest in Internetworking and local area networks by providing consulting services on these topics: World Wide Web site construction (including sites for the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce�s "Buy Greater Austin Showcase" and the Greater Austin Quality Council�s Quality Forum.) He is currently working with both the Chamber of Commerce and the Quality Council to further develop their web sites.