Dell'Oro Group predicts in its recently released "Ethernet Switch — Data Center Five Year Forecast Report" that 400-Gbps switch ports will begin to ramp strongly in 2019. Meanwhile, more than half of data center switch ports will operate at either 25 Gbps or 100 Gbps in 2020, the market research firm believes.
The groundwork for the new generation of data center switch port speeds began last year, when a major data center speed upgrade cycle based on 25 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) serializer/deserializer (SerDes) chips began. This move also launched demand for 100-Gbps optical transceivers; while supply of such optical modules didn't always keep up with demand, shipments of 25-Gbps and 100-Gbps interfaces reached hundreds of thousands of ports per quarter, according to Dell'Oro sources.
"We expect 25/100 Gbps adoption to accelerate in 2017 and to comprise over half of data center switching ports within only four years of initial shipments," says Sameh Boujelbene, senior director at Dell'Oro Group. "This fast ramp will be driven by a low price premium over preceding 10-Gbps and 40-Gbps port speeds as well as switch vendors consolidating their products to provide fewer speed options."
The "Ethernet Switch — Data Center Five Year Forecast Report" provides an overview of market trends and include tables covering manufacturers' revenue, port shipments, and average selling price forecasts for various technologies. The data includes modular and fixed by port speed as well as fixed managed and unmanaged by port speed. Ports speeds forecasted include 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 25 Gbps, 40 Gbps, 50 Gbps, 100 Gbps, and 400 Gbps.
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