December 1, 1999 Web posted at: 10:22 a.m. EST (1522 GMT) by Network World Staff

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(IDG) -- 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 estimation, are eight true category-breakers.

The most innovative network products of the year

1. Out on the Net
   Dwight Gibbs, Foo' Bar
   A category-breaking service? That would have to be Akamai Technologies' FreeFlow Internet content delivery service.

2. On a beam of light
   Scott Bradner, 'Net Insider
   If I were to pick a product category of the year, it would have to be DWDM. There would be no contest.

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3. 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.

4. In the directory domain, part two
   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

5. 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.

6. On the carrier backbone
   Frank Dzubeck, Industry Commentary
   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.

7. On public and private networks
   Daniel Briere and Christine Heckart, WAN Monitor
   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.

8. 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."