Port shipments of 25- and 50-Gbps network adapters expected to continue growth in 2018: Dell'Oro

According to the Dell'Oro Group, port shipments of next-generation 25-Gbps and 50-Gbps network adapters rose in the fourth quarter of 2017 as a result of strong demand from cloud service providers. Shipment growth is expected to continue in 2018, with 25- and 50-Gbps shipments more than doubling, the market research firm says in its newly released "Controller and Adapter Quarterly Report" on the fourth quarter of 2017.

10GBase-T port shipments reached 1 million in the fourth quarter of 2017, which Dell'Oro states is the highest level ever reached. 10GBase-T will make up a higher portion of 10-Gbps shipments over the next five years, the firm predicts.

Shipments of 40-Gbps ports on enterprise servers only rose at a double-digit growth rate quarter-over-quarter. Led by shipments from Intel to a cloud service provider, adoption of 100-Gbps server connectivity is growing, Dell'Oro says in the report.

"Shipment of 25/50-Gbps network adapters grew at a healthy double-digit rate to over 1 million from the prior quarter," said Barong Fung, senior analyst at Dell'Oro Group. "Three of the largest service providers – Google, Amazon, Facebook – drove the market in the fourth quarter of 2017. We expect Microsoft to begin their adoption of 50 Gbps in 2018. We also expect strong 25-Gbps adoption by the broader market of small cloud service providers and large enterprises in 2018."

Dell'Oro's "Controller and Adapter Quarterly Report" provides tables that cover manufacturers' revenue, average selling prices, and unit and port shipments (by speed: 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 25 Gbps, 40 Gbps, 50 Gbps, and 100 Gbps) for Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) controllers and adapters. The report covers InfiniBand controllers and adapters as well.

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