Two special awards were also bestowed: Best Start-Up, given to the outstanding product from a company less than 2 years old, and the coveted Best of Interop grand prize. Here's a look at the overall winners, as well as category finalists.

Category: Convergence Technology/ Best of Interop
Winner: Siemens HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System
Siemens Information and Communication Network's HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System introduces real-time IP-based communication for large enterprises and carriers, thanks to its ability to handle 100,000 users from one node. Each node pairs two Linux-based servers in a fault-tolerant system that supports SIMPLE, SIP and SOAP in a true multivendor, interoperable environment. At $132 per user, the HiPath 8000 provides a scalable, full-featured communications platform. With SIP support, enterprises can cost-effectively integrate VoIP services into a converged network to simplify management while providing a multimedia, multimodal service.
Finalists: GLX Communicator 2.0 with multiparty calling and media streaming, Gatelinx; Polycom VSX 3000, Polycom

Category: Security Product/Best Start-Up
Winner: Seclarity SiNIC
Seclarity pushes security to the individual computer with SiNIC, a network adapter-based system that provides encryption, translation, firewalling, authentication and access control for each host in the organization. A central database and management console allow administrators to push policies and feature updates to all systems in the enterprise, or to individual nodes. This "central management with distributed enforcement" model allows enterprise policies--and the mechanisms to enforce them--to follow users to any location, with customization for individual roles, users and situations built in.
Finalists: FirewallAnalyzer Enterprise 3.5, eIQnetworks; Forum XWall V3.0, Forum Systems

Category: Wireless Product
Winner: Airespace Intelligent RF Access Point
Airespace continues to innovate in the wireless arena with its Intelligent RF Access Point, the first AP to support Multiple Input-Multiple Output (MIMO) technology to improve radio reception and throughput across complex enterprise wireless installations. Most notably, its smart-antenna technology combats the negative effects of multipath interference even when using legacy Wi-Fi clients. The new AP works in conjunction with the company's central management system.
Finalists: Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Wireless LAN Services Module, Cisco; HotPoint 1000R, Firetide

Category: Enterprise Network Infrastructure
Winner: Panduit DP5e
Panduit's DP5e Powered Patch Panel injects 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) into a 24-port patch panel, eliminating the space, power and point-of-failure problems inherent in traditional midspan panels. It also can eliminate two AC/DC power conversions from a UPS, resulting in significant savings in costs for power and cooling. This, along with a low price-per-port and advanced remote cable-management capabilities, will make those purchasing new switches think twice about paying extra for embedded PoE.
Finalists: NetVantedge 50, 100, 200, DiskSites; Ether-Raptor ER-1808, Raptor Networks Technology

Category: Network Applications
Winner: BlackBall BlackMagic
BlackBall's BlackMagic Server Edition storage-management software brings together search, backup and versioning capabilities. Able to run on Linux, Solaris or Windows 2000, BlackMagic provides a networked drive based on its own Rich Media File System (RMFS), which automatically indexes files based on both content and metadata. Instead of overwriting files, RMFS intercepts every saved file and calculates changes made since the last save, so files can be rolled back to any previous version.
Finalists: Autonomic Network & System Administration, Autonomic Software; Xkey 2.0, KeyComputing

Category: Network Management
Winner: Coradiant TrueSight
Coradiant's TrueSight appliance is one of only a few completely passive Web-performance monitors available today; it uses a network tap that allows it to inspect traffic without affecting the network or requiring agent software. The TrueSight appliance is unique in its ability to inspect encrypted SSL traffic--just import the public and private keys, and it decrypts on the fly. TrueSight can also filter out sensitive information, such as a user's password, before saving and archiving data.
Finalists: Tripwire for Network Devices 3.0, Tripwire; xFire 3.0, Xaffire

Category: Network Servers & Peripherals
Winner: APC InfraStruXure American Power Conversion's InfraStruXure High Density architecture can be defined as a "data center in a box" in which APC has combined all of the elements needed to build a data center into a modular architecture. The product allows data-center designers to choose enclosures, racks, cooling components and power-supply technology, and assemble those various pieces into a complete custom data-center infrastructure. Finalists: AutoView Wireless, Avocent; Pulsar EX RT/Nexa, MGE UPS Systems

Category: Networked Storage Product
Winner: High-Rely
Highly Reliable Systems' new High-Rely 80 GB 7 Bay HR-7BRACK-7-80BNDL backup system unit provides an alternative to tape by integrating inexpensive EIDE hard drives into a housing that provides USB 2.0 connectivity. The High-Rely supports hot-swap capabilities while still being easy to use. Highly Reliable Systems says the unit costs less than comparable tape-backup systems and offers a lower long-term TCO.
Finalists: BrightStor ARCserve Backup Release 11, Computer Associates International; ClipDrive Bio, Memory Experts International

Category: Network Testing
Winner: Spirent Abacus 5000
Spirent Communications' Abacus 5000 IP Telephony Test Migration Platform offers those looking to roll out IP-based voice, video and data services the ability to stress-test their networks with multi-service traffic streams, such as voice and data. Being able to test converged data will not only prevent oversubscription, but provide a road map for proper roll-out of infrastructure, ensuring optimal scalability at the lowest possible cost.
Finalists: GPN 5.0, Gomez; NetAgent, QoSmetrics

Category: Performance Enhancement
Winner: Crescendo Maestro Platform
Crescendo Networks' Maestro Platform offers a boost in performance to the entire application-infrastructure delivery chain. Maestro combines traditional acceleration technologies, such as SSL and TCP termination and data compression, with a high-speed RDMA interconnect fabric. At the same time Maestro is decreasing bandwidth utilization via compression, it can increase the capacity of your existing infrastructure by eliminating the overhead of TCP setup and teardown. It also reduces overall latency by alleviating the data-transfer bottleneck inherent between application and database servers.
Finalists: XG4 (XML Generation 4) Product Family, DataPower; NetScaler 9000 Series Application Delivery System, NetScaler