Then the fun started. Front-runners were put on the hot seat as judging teams dug into the nitty-gritty of each product. After these face-to-face meetings, the judges convened to discuss the merits of each qualifier and selected a winner in each category. There were also two special awards: Best Start-Up, given to the outstanding product from a company less than two years old, and the coveted Best of Interop Grand Prize.

Now on to the winners...

3Com Corp. NJ90 Network Jack click to enlarge

The NJ90 is a four-port, 10/100 switch packaged into a wall jack, giving new meaning to the term small footprint. It multiplies the capacity of cramped wiring closets by a factor of four while eliminating the disruption, cost and time involved in running and terminating new cable. The icing on the cake: a retail price of $99.

Finalists:
• EmergeCore Networks IT-100 "IT in a Box" (www.emergecore.com)
• Sprint SprintLink Frame Relay (www.sprint.com)

Network Applications Software

Winner: Computer Associates International CleverPath Portal (www.ca.com)

CleverPath's Information In Action program lets organizations add high-octane knowledge management and business intelligence to their CleverPath Portal applications by welding business metrics into the dashboard. The portal features prebuilt portlets, support for multiple Web standards, autotranscoding, both .Net and J2EE Web services and integration portlets for major document-management vendors.

Finalists:
• Enpia CDMaster (www.enpia.net)
• Websense Enterprise 5 (www.websense.com)

Network Servers & Peripherals

Winner: Digital V6 Kaveman 16 (www.digitalv6.com)

Digital V6 Kaveman 16 click to enlarge

Kaveman 16 sports all the features you'd expect from a high-quality IP KVM switch plus innovative extras, such as access for up to six people via IP with any browser that supports Java or with a VNC client. Kaveman's three integrated serial ports can be used for serial consoles, remote control of the Kaveman 16 with a modem, or for control of other serial devices. No specialized software is needed to access the Kaveman 16, which can support as many as 32 servers and is manageable via SNMP MIB. The unit supports SSL and SSH for secure access.

Finalists:
American Power Conversion Corp. InfraStruXure (www.apc.com)
Intel Pro/1000 MT Quad Port Server Adapter (www.intel.com)

Convergence Technology

Winner: VBrick Systems VBXcast (www.vbrick.com)

VBXcast, the Best of Interop Grand Prize Winner, is a standalone video appliance that compresses audio and video signals into MPEG-4 format for delivery as high-quality streaming media over LANs, WANs and the Internet.

Finalists:

• Cisco Systems IP Phones 7902G, 7905G and 7912G (www.cisco.com)
• Radvision Corp. viaIP 400 (www.radvision.com)

Wireless Technologies

Winner: The Air Magnet Distributed System (www.airmagnet.com)

The Air Magnet Distributed System click to enlarge

The AirMagnet Distributed WLAN Integrity Management System lets network managers sniff out both rogue and authorized access points across an enterprise. It can detect access points with misconfigured security policies as well as identify wireless intruders. AirMagnet was the only finalist to cover both 802.11a and 802.11b networks.

Finalists:
• AirWave Wireless Management Platform (www.airwave.com)
• Chantry Networks BeaconWorks (www.chantrynetworks.com)

Networked Storage

Cisco Systems MDS 9000 IP Storage Services Module (www.cisco.com)

Cisco's MDS 9000 IP combines the benefits of Fibre Channel and Ethernet. This eight-port line card supports both iSCSI and FCIP simultaneously on each port and delivers wire-speed performance. The MDS 9000 overcomes the distance limitations of Fibre Channel, facilitating SAN extensions for remote backup, mirroring over LANs, WANs and MANs, and other applications.

Finalists:
• Computer Associates International BrightStor SAN Manager (www.ca.com)
• Sony Electronics SAIT-1 drive (www.storagebysony.com)

Network Test & Measurement

Winner: Ixia Optixia & OLM1000STXS24 (www.ixiacom.com)

Ixia's new load module, a RISC-based traffic generation blade for the Optixia line, offers interchangeable fiber and copper ports, a centralized software-distribution model and support for 48 independent instances of Linux (one per port). The combination of innovative hardware engineering and streamlined management of the Linux-enabled virtual machines gives testers a more time- and cost-effective method of performing Layer 2 to 7 performance testing.

Finalists:
• Spirent Communications IPSec Hardware Accelerator (www.spirentcom.com)
• WildPackets RFGrabber Solution (www.wildpackets.com)

Network Management

Winner: Panacya BusinessAware 2.2 (www.panacya.com)

BusinessAware helps businesses resolve service delivery issues quickly with its thresholding and organizational technology. It replaces the usual static thresholds that swell IT maintenance costs with intelligent dynamic thresholds built with baseline, real-time and expert input. Noisy alerts are avoided through a peer-to-peer communications system at the agent level, and each management domain, network, system and application unit can identify those metrics deemed important.

Finalists:
• Lumeta Corp. IPsonar 2.0 (www.lumeta.com)
• OPNet Technologies VNE Server 1.2 (www.opnet.com)

Performance Enhancement

Winner: Nauticus Networks N2000 Intelligent Data Center Switches (www.nauticusnet.com)

The N2000 series switches provide enhanced network performance at Layer 4 to 7 using the TideRunner chipset, integrated SSL cryptographic acceleration and TCP termination capabilities. Nauticus' Virtual Switch Technology lets a single device be partitioned into multiple, fully compartmentalized virtual switches, each with its own routing tables, VLANs, content routing rules and security policies.

Finalist:
• Tarari Anti-Virus Content Processor (www.tarari.com)

Security

Winner: netForensics 3.1 (www.netforensics.com)

The proliferation of security devices--and the events they generate--make aggregation and correlation necessary to manage the flood; netForensics distributes the database for local load-balancing and rules for forwarding events to a central database, improving performance. It manually correlates events across multiple security events, providing accurate naming regardless of the originating sensor. And its Java-based user interface overcomes HTML limitations to offer numerous feature enhancements, such as high-level visualizations and context-sensitive launching of external management consoles.

Finalists:
• Computer Associates eTrust Security Command Center (www.ca.com)
• CyberGuard Corp. NSP2000B-SSL Half-Height (www.cyberguard.com)