Sales of Ethernet switches remain flat, but the market for 40 gigabit per second switches is increasing:
The total Q3 Ethernet switch market revenue was $6.1 billion, just two per cent higher than for the same quarter in 2014, and the enterprise share slipped from Q2 to Q3 by 7.2 per cent.
North America was the best place to be selling switches in 2015, with IDC saying is rose 8.2 per cent year-on-year. The Asia-Pac rose 3.9 per cent, China by 3.6 per cent, and Western Europe was nearly flat at 0.8 per cent.
[...] A bright spot for vendors is that customers seem to be drinking the 40 Gbps kool-aid. While 10 Gbps port shipments rose by 27.4 per cent, prices are falling, so the segment value dipped by 1.6 per cent. The 40 Gbps segment, on the other hand, rose 41.4 per cent year-on-year to a value of $644 million.
More info about 25 Gigabit Ethernet (and 50), and 100 Gigabit Ethernet (and 40).
Related Stories
Rebranded Ethernet Technology Consortium Unveils 800 Gigabit Ethernet
With an increasing demand for networking speed and throughput performance within the datacenter and high performance computing clusters, the newly rebranded Ethernet Technology Consortium has announced a new 800 Gigabit Ethernet technology. Based upon many of the existing technologies that power contemporary 400 Gigabit Ethernet, the 800GBASE-R standard is looking to double performance once again, to feed ever-hungrier datacenters.
The recently-finalized standard comes from the Ethernet Technology Consortium, the non-IEEE, tech industry-backed consortium formerly known as the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium. The group was originally created to develop 25, 50, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet technology, and while IEEE Ethernet standards have since surpassed what the consortium achieved, the consortium has stayed formed to push even faster networking speeds, and changing its name to keep with the times. Some of the biggest contributors and supporters of the ETC include Broadcom, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft, with more than 40 companies listed as integrators of its work.
[...] All told, the 800GbE standard is the latest step for an industry as a whole that is moving to Terabit (and beyond) Ethernet. And while those future standards will ultimately require faster [Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes)] to drive the required individual lane speeds, for now 800GBASE-R can deliver 800GbE on current generation hardware. All of which should be a boon for the standard's intended hyperscaler and HPC operator customers, who are eager to get more bandwidth between systems.
Related: As 100 Gbps Ethernet Picks Up, Google Ponders 5 Petabits Per Second
Ethernet Switch Sales Flat, But 40 Gbps Sales Take Off
Here Comes 5Gbps Networking Over Standard Cables
Aquantia Launches 2.5/5/10G Ethernet Chips for Consumers
25G/50G Ethernet Specification Finalized
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:00PM
What cables to buy? What connectors? What switches? No? Well, that must be why people still deploy copper lines.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:02PM
SFP+ ?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:08PM
Great example of the general confusion seeing as SPF+ is 16Gbps while the article discusses 40Gbps.
* 10Gbps in practice but I'm not getting into that...
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(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:24PM
SFP+ I have seen is 5gbps; sometimes 10gbps, but if so it's usually proprietary to replace genuine stacking cables between switches in a stack or virtual chassis.
And I do not endorse its use; it seems pretty shoddy to me. Perhaps its just been the cables and vendors I've seen pushed regarding its use; it could be there are quality components out there and I have been on cheap projects.
if SFP+ means 16mbps token ring, I wouldn't be surprised because it seems to mean everything faster than 1gbps.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:00PM
And I do not endorse its use; it seems pretty shoddy to me. Perhaps...
No no you were right the first time. It's a mess of property lock-ins, sub(non-existing)standard performance and price gauging.
It won't be safe to use until you'd be able to go into Walmart, ask for a fiber extension wire or a fiber LAN switch, and get what you want without having to say another word. That is, if you need to google anything to do with connectors or fiber materials, types and widths, you might be doing it right, but the market is doing it wrong so you better stir clear.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday December 11 2015, @01:06AM
SFP goes at least to 4G
SFP+ is 10G
QSFP is 40G - 4 colors
SFP25/28 (not quite sure the exact name) is 25G/28G
CXP is for 100G (10x10G)
QSFP28 is for 100G (4x25G), and you use 4 of them for 400G...
Not sure if they will call the new ones for 50GigE SFP56...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:20PM
In-house as in residential fiber? Why? Monitor your network usage. How often do you even go above 100mb let alone 1000mb? 1g copper will readily support a full household of 4k streaming internet addicts at a fraction of the price.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @04:34AM
yaha. what if the pci-e ssds are 10 or 50 or 1000 meters apart?
pcie ssd are 256 gb and "cheap". if the cpu supports 6 or 7 or 8 GT/s (gigatransfers) then the pcie ssd is not going to waste and then 1 gigabit ethernet is your bottleneck.
so yes i would like more in-house bandwidth?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @12:40PM
If your house is 1000 meters across and have a need to bulk transfer at ssd speeds at that distance it'd be faster to just get into your gold plated Bentley and drive your storage to the other side of the compound.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:08PM
in our data centers, said one CIO to another in the corporate box on the 17th green at Augusta National, as Rory McIlroy prepared his approach shot from the fairway.
(Score: 1) by Kushan on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:26PM
Hardly surprising, gigabit has been around for long enough that no doubt the market is saturated and there's just not enough push on 10GigE or above for anything other than datacentres. If you want the market to grow, start pushing the technology down to offices and businesses. We'd have installed 10GigE equipment in our offices if an equivalent switch wasn't literally 20x the price.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Hyperturtle on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:33PM
Comcast has a 2gb offering, and the little * in the pricing indicates that customers are on the hook for paying for the 10gige fiber switch to connect to them, and to provide a way to take that 2gbps delivered on 10gig and to break it up into a way they can use it, because two 1gigs are not provided. You have to have at least 2 10gig ports.
If you want a firewall, it has to have a 10gig connection on it or you need an intermediary switch with multiple 10gig connections, and it has to be managed, so that you can take Comcast's 10gig in, and then break that to 10gig out to perhaps port channelled 2gb gigabit over two 1gb links to a device that can then firewall that 2gb uplink, and then take that 2gb and pass it through to the internal network -- either with a 1gb dmz and a 1gb internal or a 2gb internal or 2gb dmz or whatever you can pull.
It is very costly to get the service and the service is just a fraction of that cost.
10gb hardware has to come down in price before its feasible, and this is for residential and small businesses! Either you invest in a bunch of no name or off-brand hardware and accept that there will be few resources online to research in case of problems, hard to reach support, or whatever, or you drop the money on name brand high end stuff in case it inevitably breaks and Comcast blames your network and you need to call the vendor to resolve it when someone who can do networks isn't around to help you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:11PM
I know that there are places where 10+ GigE is important, but most offices and businesses don't have a use for it that justifies the price. If you have 16 PCs running Excel and Word, you don't need data-center-level networking, and you sure don't need to pay for it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday December 11 2015, @12:44AM
It's down to getting the hardware support for it.
802.11ac Wi-Fi rollout has been pretty swift. It's supported by high-end smartphones, laptops, and my $100 Chromebook. Theoretically, the most expensive 802.11ac devices packed with antennae could be capable of transmitting 6.77 Gbps. 1-2 Gbps is more realistic, and more than 1 Gbps Ethernet can transfer.
Google Fiber is promising 10 Gbps home and business connections "in the future". While that is more likely to be used by several users with 10/100/1000 devices, such a rollout would be a reason to think about adding 10 GigE to more laptops and workstations.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:29PM
At SC15 this year they were talking about Terabit ethernet!!!
I'd be happy with anything better than 10Mbs right now...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:47PM
10 Mbps... I'm still fighting to get the office upgraded to gigabit. Small office - under 10 users, most of which wouldn't know a switch if I hit them in the head with one. Although I did get gigabit rolled out for my home network about a year ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @04:09PM
I doubt it really benefits most people in typical small offices - not so many deal with large files (videos, VMs etc). But if it would really benefit them, your office snack/latte budgets could probably buy a switch. 53 bucks for a dlink 16 port gigabit switch. Less than 20 bucks for an 8 port switch. So if only a few will chip in get the 8 port switch and leave the rest on the old switch.
From my experience most short run cabling supports gigabit in practice, at least well enough to be faster than 100Mbps and definitely faster than 10Mbps.