The Need for Speed
The market for 10G and faster network ports is at a tremendous growth pace right now. According to the latest Infonetics Report, the uptake in 10G, 40G and 100G is expected to tenfold by 2014.
And interestingly enough it is not a tenfold from very low levels, which tends to be the case when we see booming markets numbers being touted. No, the 10G and above market in the enterprise and service provider segments was already in 2009 north of $10 billion ($11.1 to be exact according to the report).
So what drives this insatiable demand for bandwidth?
For the Service Provider segment it is clear that the growth stems from the build-outs of new Fiber Access networks. They are architected for service delivery over Ethernet, and generate traffic in high volumes that is aggregated by switches and routers. In turn, they need interface speeds that are several magnitudes higher than the access side of the network. Already in this early phase of the market, the interest for Gigabit access is real, and growing through for instance the Googles initiative “Fiber for Communities”. Also new products are arriving to meet the new demands. The recently announced high-density gigabit access switch developed jointly by Accton and Xelerated, is perfectly aimed to this market.
The 10G growth is not limited to the service provider segment. Also enterprises are inevitably migrating to 10G interface connectivity. End-users consume more bandwidth, and require that data centers scale in parity with that growth.
Some philosopher said “the best way to predict the future is to create it”. At Xelerated we make the fastest and most flexible chips for this new market. We are part of the creation. But does this mean we know where future networking will be in 20 years? Sure – let me just take out my crystal ball from the drawer…
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