The cynical among us might say network products are a dime a dozen. And to some extent, they wouldn't be wrong. A whole lot of products do little more than the next. Finding a product or technology that has the potential to change the networked world - or at least a little corner of it - is rare indeed. But nine Network World columnists have done just that. Here, in their estimates, are true category-breakers.

A category-breaking service? That would have to be Akamai Technologies' FreeFlow Internet content delivery service. Read more

If I were to pick a product category of the year, it would have to be DWDM. There would be no contest. Read more

In the directory domain
Mark Gibbs, Backspin and Gearhead

We're about to witness a seismic event with Microsoft's release of Active Directory Services as a subsystem of Windows 2000. ADS, a Windows NT-only global directory service, boasts a number of interesting and compelling features. Read more

In the directory domain
James Kobielus, Above the Cloud

With its July 1999 announcement of this forthcoming metadirectory product, Novell became the first directory software vendor to position XML as its core format for directory schema publishing, data interchange and query. Read more

In the security realm
Winn Schwartau, On Security

I have always found secrecy, privacy and encryption intriguing. In 15 years, though, I have only encountered a couple of companies with products that I felt were "on the mark" function-wise. One of those companies is Tecsec, with its Constructive Key Management cryptographic software. Read more

Start-up Sycamore Networks is the leading creator of products that make intelligent optical networking happen economically. In its short lifetime, Sycamore has brought to market the first applicable optical product - the SN 8000 Intelligent Optical Transport Node - for metropolitan and regional access, as well as long-haul backbone transport. Read more

Visual Networks' Visual UpTime WAN management software has changed the service provider model for deploying and managing data services. It has become the default standard for network performance monitoring and service-level agreement measurement. Read more

On the applications front
Dave Kearns, Wired Windows

Business Layers' eProvision Employees not only sets a standard, it creates a whole new category of application - "eprovisionware." Read more

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