Lower-Speed Port Sales Down, 10G+ On The Rise

Port sales are all good, but some are doing better than that. “Overall, shipments of all port speeds have been on a steady upward path as a result of growing network traffic and the need to constantly upgrade networks, but the revenue growth opportunity is in higher-speed ports (10G, 40G, 100G  but excluding 1G), shipments for which shot up 62 percent in 2012,” says Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst/Enterprise Networks and Video at Infonetics Research. He points out that while 1G port revenue is dropping due to commoditization and the ports are becoming standard on network equipment, he expects high-speed (10G+) port revenue to double by 2017, topping $42 billion. In fact, the optical segment, 100G could account for more than 10 percent of optical transport spending this year alone.