5/17/2010 -- According to market watcher Infonetics Research, carriers and enterprises alike have a near-insatiable appetite for 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10G), 40-Gigabit Ethernet (40G) and (in some cases) 100-Gigabit Ethernet (100G) hardware.

Not surprisingly, concedes Michael Howard, a principal analyst with Infonetics, demand for Big Pipe gear is strongest among service providers.

"While worldwide spending on service provider IP edge routers declined overall in 2009, spending on high-speed 40G ports on IP edge routers increased 125 percent. A similar trend is playing out in other routing and switching segments and in the optical network hardware space," said Howard, in a statement. "This is the clearest indication yet that service providers are turning to higher-speed options for their next-generation networks to handle skyrocketing traffic."

All the same, enterprises also have a healthy appetite for high Ethernet bandwidth. "Revenue from 10G port shipments to enterprises grew 32 percent in 2009, to $1.5 billion. Despite the significant pullback in overall investments in 2009 -- for example, Ethernet switch sales fell 19 percent in 2009 -- investments in high-speed networking devices increased as enterprises continued building out their core network infrastructure to respond to growing levels of traffic," explained Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data at Infonetics, in a prepared release.

Shipments of 10G and 40G ports to both service provider and enterprise customers increased by almost two-fifths (38 percent) last year.

More tellingly, Infonetics reports, enterprise and service provider buyers bought two times as many 40G ports in 2009 as they did in 2008.

Combined 10G and 40G revenues topped $11 billion last year, according to Infonetics. That tally likely would have been even higher if (as was the case in almost every hardware segment) vendors hadn't slashed prices to stimulate sales. Even so, Infonetics projects "strong" 10G, 40G and (increasingly) 100G over the next five years, with combined port shipments expected to increase by 1,000 percent between now and 2014.
--By Stephen Swoyer