In the fall of 2004, SearchNetworking.com invited companies in the networking market to nominate their products for the 2004 Products of the Year awards. To be eligible for consideration, a product had to have been introduced or significantly upgraded between Sept. 30, 2003, and Oct. 1, 2004. For previously available products, the upgrade must have incorporated major new features that were designed to meet new or evolving needs in the marketplace.

We looked at products in seven categories -- enterprise-class routers and switches, network security devices and tools, network management tools, enterprise VPN solutions, converged network solutions, and WLAN equipment and applications. Each category had its own set of judges, who rated the products in six categories -- innovation, performance, ease of integration into environment, ease of use and manageability, functionality, value, and service and support. We then tallied the judges ratings separately, and aggregated them with those of the other judges to come up with a single numerical score.