5/13/2008 -- While the networking industry as a whole seems to be doing very well, its metro Ethernet sub-segment is on a rip-roaring tear. Metro Ethernet sales surged to $13 billion last year, up 27 percent from the previous year. What's more, said market watcher Infonetics Research, metro sales could grow at a double-digit clip over the next four years.

That's the upshot of Infonetics' latest Metro Ethernet Equipment report, which found that metro Ethernet gear continues to displace entrenched SONET/SDH or ATM equipment.

"By 2011-2012, the majority of access and aggregation equipment being deployed by carriers around the world will be IP, Ethernet and WDM, not SONET/SDH," said Michael Howard, a principal analyst for optical and metro Ethernet with Infonetics, in a statement. "In 2007 and especially in 2008, we're seeing more carriers using Ethernet, and more carriers conducting interoperability tests of all sorts of Ethernet products for residential broadband, business connections and mobile backhaul."

According to Howard and Infonetics, sales of routers and carrier Ethernet switches, as well as surging demand for Ethernet over DSL and Ethernet over optical offerings, helped fuel metro Ethernet growth. Going forward, Infonetics predicted, Ethernet microwave will emerge as the fastest growing metro technology; the bulk of Ethernet microwave gear will probably be deployed in support of the mobile backhaul. (Today, microwave accounts for roughly 55 to 60 percent of worldwide mobile backhaul connections.)

Elsewhere, Infonetics found, vendors shipped a total of 40.5 million metro Ethernet ports last year; that number is projected to grow at a healthy clip through 2011, spurred by demand for VDSL 10/100M and EPON ports. --Stephen Swoyer