Features

Introduction to the 8th Annual Well-Connected Awards By James Hutchinson Welcome to our 2002 Well-Connected Awards issue. Here we explain the process and principles for selecting the products that compete in this event and share insights on breakthroughs and trends in eight key technology markets. You'll find an elite list of winners and finalists in the eight technology markets most critical to your business -- the 43 best hardware, software and service solutions we've evaluated over the past year.

Category: Security  And the Winner Is: Nortel Contivity 4600 New Security Threats - Stronger Defenses By Mike Fratto "By now you should know there is no silver security bullet. The defense-in-depth strategy dictates that, starting at the network edge and moving in toward your most important assets, your defenses should become more restrictive and tightly tailored to specific security problems."

Category: Network & Systems Management  And the Winner Is: Keynote KeyReadiness Small Gains Add Up to Big Benefits By Bruce Boardman "The improvement of network management is not a linear process, and certainly not startling or scintillating. But as plodding as the progress might seem, network management is improving steadily."

Category: Mobile & Wireless Technology  And the Winner Is: Spectrum24 product line Risky Business? Mobile Still Attracts Mindshare By Dave Molta "Wireless is the kind of technology that lets you envision creative mobility applications to empower your co-workers, but at the same time it's clearly risky. Wireless is fraught with complexity, competing standards, security concerns and extremely high costs."

Category: Digital Convergence  And the Winner Is: Apple Quicktime Streaming Server Voice and Data Come Together Over IP By Sean Doherty "You can hide your voice and data cables under floors, over ceilings and inside closets, but you can't put the idea of data, voice and video on one network out of sight and out of mind. Convergence is here."

Category: Service Providers & Outsourcing  And the Winner Is: Caldera TEAM Services Service Providers Search for Silver Lining By Darrin Woods "Service providers barreled into the 21st century with hapless abandon, multiplying and hatching ingenious new services to sell to hungry customers. But a sagging economy in early 2001 necessitated that most enterprises hold back on purchasing services."

Category: Business Applications  And the Winner Is: Intraspect 5 Applications Business Apps Focus on Collaboration, Access By Lori MacVittie "In the past year nearly all the applications we tested in our labs focused on the ease of cultivating and maintaining virtual relationships. We concentrated on portals, Web-based collaborative environments, software change management and the infrastructure to support these applications."

Category: Infrastructure  And the Winner Is: F5 Networks Big-IP 5000 Infrastructure Creed: Faster, Smarter, Stronger By Peter Morrissey "The infrastructure market has gained momentum this past year. LANs, WANs and MANs are faster and will get even speedier once 10-Gigabit Ethernet hits full stride. And as far as OSes go, Linux has gained credibility in the enterprise -- on the server side anyway -- and we liked Apple's latest version of Max OS X."

Category: Data Management & Storage Technology  And the Winner Is: Qlogic QLA2300 Storage Upheaval Means Lower Prices for IT Buyers By Steven J. Schuchart Jr. "The storage market, once considered JBOD (just a bunch of disks), continued to grow over the past year. We've seen an explosive expansion in storage virtualization and interoperability standards. Upheaval is the watchword, but the market still thrives."

Networld+Interop Extravaganza The Daily Blog:  N+I Updates Check out our Daily Blog throughout the week for on-site reports, photos, interviews and other show miscellany.

Webcasts: Inside Network Computing: Inside the Well-Connected Awards Brad Shimmin sits down with Director of Editorial Content Jim Hutchinson to talk about the biggest surprises in this year's crop of award winners.

The Well-Connected Awards Video On-demand viewing of all the surprised looks and unanticipated guffaws as they happened at the awards ceremony. Plus, you can watch our infamous uncommercials, which, as always, are just one iota short of scandalous.

Best of Interop Awards Video (This broadcast will be live on Tuesday afternoon) See a live broadcast of our "on-site" awards, the Best of Interop. Find out which products caught our editors' attention on the show floor.

Workshops

Campus WLAN Design By Dave Molta Tasked with implementing a wireless LAN? It's not as difficult as you might think once you know the basics of radio design. Here's a primer.

Buyer's Guide: The Old 10/100 Layer 2 Switcheroo By Peter Morrissey Wiring closet switches are simple buys -- until you factor in maintenance. We weigh today's options.

Online Only: Interactive Buyer's Guide: 10/100/1000 Layer 2 Switches Use our guide for your Layer 2 switch purchasing decisions. Compare the features of top products to find the right switch for your company's needs.

Sneak Previews

Online Only: Extended Systems XTNDConnect Server By Hector Farias We test drove this personal productivity tool turned enterprise-application platform and liked the built-in "auto-messaging" components. Reporting tools were a disappointment, though.

Track Service-Desk Activities Using UniPress FootPrints 5.5 By Lori MacVittie Our tests show this service-desk management software does well in customer-problem time tracking -- a new accounting system with time-tracking features for multiple billing rates and customizable rates based on incident type. But FootPrints provides little in the way of monitoring capabilities.

InfoExpress CyberGatekeeper Ensures Remote Users Comply With Security Policies By Michael J. DeMaria If your remote users aren't taking required security measures, we liked CyberGatekeeper's ability to shut them out of the LAN within a few seconds. The downside to this device is its limited reporting capabilities.

NetIQ's VoIP Manager Keeps Voice and Data in Harmony By Lee Badman We took an exclusive look at this VoIP manager and found it has what it takes to keep voice running smoothly over your data network.

Presence-AR Adapter Lets Disparate Applications Work Collaboratively By Ron Anderson Looking for a way to enable multiple applications for collaboration? This tool from Advanced Reality -- a new kid on the collaborative-computing block -- is on our short list for achieving real-time collaboration.

Departments

Security the Main Event for Olympic IT Specialists By Kelly Jackson Higgins Athletes weren't the only competitors at the Salt Lake City Winter Games. Hackers tried -- but failed -- to outsmart the secure network.

Quick Takes Want to see which tech products are new and improved? This week, Network Computing takes a look at these hot commodities: StarTech.com StarView KVM Over IP Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1 VSX SafeNet SoftRemote 8.0 Compuware Vantage 8.0

Letters "We design for 99.986 percent availability, but most of our systems have run at 99.999 percent or better for the past 15 years." --David Stewart, Bonneville Power Administration

Columns

Business to Business: Checking Up on Your WLANs By Peter Morrissey "Have you ever accessed the Internet from your car? I have -- courtesy of a WLAN access point in an unsuspecting neighbor's house. I was wardriving, mapping out wireless access points for an upcoming product review."

Top of the Stack: The New Top Tier By David Willis "In the communications business, the winners will be Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and AT&T. The rest will merge, get acquired or implode. Is your telecom carrier's strategy keeping up with the times? What was, in 1998, a safe, sane policy may be reckless and misguided in 2002."

BuzzCut Update: Do-It-All Web Services? Reality Check, Please By Don MacVittie Industry pundits claim that Web services do everything you need done in record time and with existing staff. But don't you believe it. They won't really be ready until a solid base of technologists and a reliable security framework emerge.

BuzzCut Update: Can 1.024-Bit Keys be Cracked? All in Good Time By Jeff Forristal A day will come when your encrypted data will be readable, as evidenced by a recent paper outlining a possible method for cracking 1024-bit RSA keys. Should you worry? Eventually. But for now, here's some advice on how you can keep up with the evolution of cryptography.

Down to Business: Say What You Mean By Rob Preston "Take the 'we eat our own dog food' mantra, recited by tech vendors and customers alike. With all due respect to the fine folks at Purina, IT innovators shouldn't compare the fruits of their nimble intellects to clumps of meat and meat byproducts."

The Inside Story: The Year in Review -- Network Computing Style By James Hutchinson "I know -- it's only May, so how in the world can I do a recap column when the year's not even half over? Fact is, this look back is not based on the calendar year. It's based on the Network Computing test year -- the roughly 365 days' worth of lab time we've spent with the technology products designed for your organization's computing environments."

BuzzCut: Microsoft Keys In on the Enterprise By Lori MacVittie With the recent demise of Hailstorm, Microsoft may have conceded that the platform isn't what breeds success for Web services; it's the applications available for the platform. But make no mistake -- the company is digging in for the larger enterprise battle.