Award: SOHO Remote Access Solution
Winner: 3Com Corp.: 3Com OfficeConnect Remote 840 SDSL Router
Unlike the SOHO remote access devices of yesteryear, today's choice of remote access routers is largely made by the Internet service provider. Although the service provider makes most of the purchasing decisions for the end user, the market for SOHO remote access devices remained cutthroat over the last year. 3Com Corp. earns Network Computing's 2001 Well-Connected Award for best SOHO Remote Access Device. Its ease of use, solid performance and strong feature set put it a notch above the competition.
The 3Com OfficeConnect Remote 840 SDSL Router delivers on 3Com's "Radically Simple" guarantee with a product that provides extreme simplicity in a very complex environment. Its no-hassle configuration and management interface provide critical management information and statistics, and its intuitive configuration menus leave little room for error. For building a SOHO access device that's truly in touch with the customer, go with 3Com's offering.
-- Joel Conover
Award: Fixed-Configuration LAN Switch
Winner: Extreme Networks: Summit 7i
Fixed configuration switches are designed to provide the enterprise with low-cost, high-density wiring closet and data center connectivity. While many vendors announced new products in the 24-, 48- and even 80-port configuration area, the battle in the 10/100 market segment was largely relegated to price. And while other vendors were busy rolling out these products in a battle for market supremacy, Extreme Networks was busy raising the bar for performance with its 32-port, fixed-configuration Summit 7i Gigabit Ethernet switching solution.
Like many of Extreme's products, the Summit 7i sets new expectations for performance and price. Extreme's Inferno architecture, which forms the basis of the Summit 7i switch, brings powerful Layer 2-4 functionality with 32 ports of wire speed gigabit switching prowess. With the introduction of gigabit over copper in the July 2000 timeframe, the Summit 7i became the largest fixed-configuration gigabit-over-copper switch in the enterprise, offering an attractive set of features at a price that other vendors have yet to beat.
-- Joel Conover
Award: Modular-Configuration Switch
Winner: Cisco Systems: Cisco Catalyst 6509 Multilayer Switch
Modular-configuration switches are the bread and butter of enterprise solutions providers. Just about every four years, switching capacity leapfrogs desktop performance, usually by an order of magnitude. Right now, the network is significantly faster than the desktop. As a result, vendors are seeking ways to improve the overall quality of their products rather than significantly beef-up performance. No vendor has done more to increase the value of its switching platform than Cisco Systems.
The Cisco Catalyst 6500 family of switches delivers performance along with an extensive set of features and add-ons. As part of its overall AVVID strategy, Cisco has brought extensive voice-over-IP support to the 6000 family of switches, including network-based codec resources and power over Ethernet. Cisco also has been active on the security front, adding extensive policy-based management support and integrated IDS functionality to the 6000 and 6500. And the company hasn't slouched on performance, either. This year, Cisco beefed up the 6500 from 32 gigabits per second to 256Gbps. For technological innovation that has proven itself both in the lab and in the field, Cisco earns the Well-Connected Award for modular switching.
-- Joel Conover
Award: Content Switch
Winner: Winner: Cisco Systems: Cisco Systems CSS-11154 Content Services Switch
In less than a year, vendors have managed to transform the simple job of Web load balancing into a complex entity that is aware of session and URL information. The move from simple Layer-4 to more complex Layer-7 switching has created a new breed of products known as Content Switches. Leading the charge on content-enabled networking is Cisco Systems and its CSS-11154 Content Services Switch.
Acquired from ArrowPoint a little over a year ago, Cisco has leveraged the CSS-11154 as part of a complete content distribution network solution. Although it faces tough competition from Nortel Networks' Alteon business unit, our testing experience has convinced us that Cisco's CSS-11154 is the best of the current breed of content switching solutions available.
While some competitors offer higher performance, at the end of the day, Cisco's CSS-11154 truly delivers on the claim 'content aware.' Cisco's load-aware content switching capabilities and integrated content replication system simplify the job of the content administrator by automatically moving data to the best location on a content distribution network. These features set the CSS-11154 apart from the rest of the crowd, earning it this year's Well-Connected Award for best Content Switch.
-- Lori MacVittie
Award: E-Commerce Acceleration Device
Winner: Intel Corp.: Intel NetStructure 7280 XML Director
Accelerating e-commerce is big business lately. Assuring that customers receive top-notch service is a must to be successful in the market. That means prioritization of traffic according to SLAs (Service Level Agreements), better response times from your site for everyone and 24x7 availability. But acceleration of an e-commerce transaction through your business is just as important. Service doesn't stop at the application server, after all.
Our Well-Connected Award for E-Commerce Acceleration Devices this year goes to Intel Corp. for its Intel NetStructure 7280 XML Director. Providing unparalleled Layer-7 support with its ability to prioritize traffic based on XML tags, this device definitely provides acceleration of e-commerce traffic from a business perspective. The only Layer-7-aware device providing first-class error handling of missing documents, the XML Director offers the ability to provide a smooth, end-to-end e-business transaction. With the ability to direct priority traffic based on previously unknown data within an XML document to servers designated to provide the fastest transaction possible, the XML Director proved that acceleration isn't just for the network anymore.
-- Lori MacVittie
Award: Internet Traffic Management Device
Winner: Cisco Systems: Cisco 7206 VXR Multifunction Router with Cisco Provisioned QoS Policy Manager 2.0
Traffic management has never been more "in your face." As utilization of bandwidth continues to rise, so do the number of traffic management devices available to manage that bandwidth and provide the best service possible for the customer. While Sitara Networks and Netscreen both provide excellent solutions for the QoS quandary, Cisco Systems outshines them both with its wide support of QoS in hardware and the accompanying management software.
With its Cisco 7206 VXR Multifunction Router with Cisco Provisioned QoS Policy Manager 2.0, the company proves that QoS policy management doesn't need to be painful. Combining a robust, feature-rich, centralized management system with the integrated support of QoS in IOS devices, Cisco provides a total solution for traffic management needs.
Centralized management of QoS policies as well as revision control and automatic loading of existing QoS policies with Cisco's Provisioned QoS Policy Manager 2.0 prove that managing QoS can be as simple as pushing a button. For its comprehensive solution to the traffic management problem, Cisco gets this year's Well-Connected Award.
-- Lori MacVittie
Award: Load Balancing Solution
Winner: F5 Networks: BIG-IP HA+ Controller 3.3
In the past year, load-balancing devices have gotten smarter and more powerful as vendors including F5 Networks, Nortel and Radware have continued to improve their products to fulfill the need for high-availability and fault-tolerant systems. The ability to scale -- and more importantly to do so in a manageable fashion -- has risen to the top of the list of "must haves" in a load-balancing solution. Not only must load balancers support Web servers, it is increasingly important that a solution be able to provide load-balancing services for a plethora of network services and devices. F5 Networks' line of BSD/Intel-based network appliances has long been a leader in the Internet traffic management space. The company continues to live up to its high standards with its load-balancing product, the BIG-IP HA+ Controller 3.3.
A best-of-breed appliance, the BIG-IP offers superb configuration and management as well as an intuitive and elegant method of managing large-scale farms. Providing a robust set of features, including stateful fail-over, gives the BIG-IP a leg up on the competition. The BIG-IP is capable of load balancing myriad of devices, including firewalls, cache servers, routers, LDAP servers, VPNs, and database and application servers. The BIG-IP HA+ Controller 3.3 couples high performance with dynamic back-end server management for an excellent overall load-balancing solution, making it our Well-Connected Award winner.
-- Lori MacVittie
Award: Enterprise Departmental Workgroup Server
Winner: Hewlett-Packard Co.: Hewlett-Packard Netserver LH 6000
Our winner this year in the server category is Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Hewlett-Packard Netserver LH 6000. This server hits the price/performance sweet spot with six Intel Pentium III Xeon processors. Faster than traditional four-way boxes and significantly cheaper than eight-way boxes, this server boasts performance and price. It can be configured as a pedestal system or flipped on its side to become an 8u rack-mount server. The server can hold up to 12 Ultra2 or Ultra3 hot-swappable SCSI drives and support up to eight gigabytes of RAM memory.
Utilizing the high-performance ServerWorks III HE chipset, this machine offers six 64-bit, 33-Mhz PCI slots and two 64-bit, 66-Mhz PCI slots running on three fully peered buses. Four of the PCI slots are hot swappable, and there are three hot-swappable power supplies. As always, HP packages the system with its fabulous Toptools for Servers and Hewlett-Packard OpenView Manage-x Event Manager. These excellent tools help to round out an already feature-packed server.
Performance of this system also is top-notch. The integrated HP NetRAID Controller can handle up to 128 MB of cache memory with optional battery backup, giving it a performance edge in disk-intensive applications. On the NIC front, this machine sports a single Intel 10/100 port. There are eight hot-swappable system fans. Hewlett-Packard put on its engineering hat for this system and came away with a winner.
-- Steven J. Schuchart, Jr.
Award: High-Availability Hosting Solution
Winner: Intel Corp.: NetStructure Product Family:1500 Cache Appliance; 6000 Switch; 7180 e-Commerce Accelerator; 7190 Multi-Site Director
Enterprises and service providers alike demand the utmost in performance, reliability and uptime from their network equipment. But nowhere do high-availability solutions draw more attention than in Internet data centers. With service providers offering guaranteed levels of service and availability, these outfits can't afford to skimp on the details. Network Computing took high-availability solutions into account throughout the year, and time after time one vendor consistently delivered products and features that provided a truly outstanding high-availability solution: Intel Corp.
While Intel has since backed away from directly delivering its products to the hosting market, it is nevertheless responsible for an entire suite of solutions that are designed from the ground up with high availability in mind. From complete hardware failover capabilities to software features such as URL error-message interception, Intel's solutions provide tools and features that simplify the job of the network administrator. For setting the standard for high-availability hosting equipment, Intel earns this year's Well-Connected Award for high-availability hosting solutions.
-- Steven J. Schuchart, Jr.
Award: Directory Migration Tool
Winner: Aelita Software Corp.: Controlled Migration Suite
When we ask network administrators what projects they've planned for 2001, migrating to Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory is at the top of most of those lists. Microsoft has finally delivered on its promise of an enterprise directory service, and now you have to make it work. Lucky you. When we reviewed Active Directory migration tools in September of last year, we found several tools that made that prospect less daunting. Looking at that market several months later, we find that Aelita has upgraded its already strong Controlled Migration Suite, addressing its lack of access to the database for modeling and adding NetWare migration and scripting features.
Therefore, the Well-Connected Award for Directory Migration Tools goes to Aelita's Controlled Migration Suite 5.6. The product retains its step-by-step wizard driven interface, good performance -- even on large geographically distributed networks -- and truly outstanding ability to roll back any step of the migration you might decide was a mistake; all the things that were always its strengths. These updates make Controlled Migration Suite best in its class in a category that is becoming a must for almost every administrator's toolkit.
-- Howard Marks
Award: Server Operating System
Winner: Sun Microsystems: Solaris 8 Operating Environment
Although the world is still suffering from dot-bomb shell shock, the last two years have provided a proving ground for operating systems vendors to prepare their solutions for the world of e-commerce. More than any other product, the editors of Network Computing must live every day with server operating systems. Every product we test and every review we conduct requires a fresh install and the latest version of at least one operating system. Our exposure in the last year has taught us well. Although Linux may pose a threat to the enterprise and despite Microsoft Corp.'s claims to be the best, our hands-down favorite operating system for rock-solid Internet-enabled applications is Sun Microsystems' Solaris 8 Operating Environment.
Solaris 8 provides the best performance for Internet applications. It's a well-known platform that has been stable for many years, and Sun's aggressive new licensing is designed to make Solaris 8 the OS of choice for Internet applications. If Sun Microsystems has proven one thing, it would be that its operating system can stand the test of time and still manage to beat the competition.
-- Ron Anderson
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