Switch and router sales surge, with 200/400 gigabit Ethernet kit growing fastest

Major networking vendors continue to report supply chain challenges, but the market for their switches and routers is growing at quite a clip according to analyst outfit IDC. The company's Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and Worldwide Quarterly Router Tracker both report robust growth during the second quarter of …

[Flak]

A glitch in the matrix

"Revenues in the non-datacenter segment of the Ethernet switch market – which includes Ethernet switch deployments in the enterprise campus and branch – grew 5.8 percent year over year, while port shipments decreased 0.4 percent year over year. The other segment IDC measures – enterprise campus and branches – grew revenue just 5.8 percent year over year and saw port shipments decrease by 0.4 percent."

[Sam Crawley]

Re: A glitch in the matrix

I struggle to see how this growth can be possible when it's so hard to source any kit!

[Screepy]

Re: A glitch in the matrix

Agreed @Sam

We moved from Cisco to Aruba during our last infrastructure refresh. We finally got our core switches replaced some 8 months after ordering. We're still waiting on our 40 edge switches, 10 months and counting..

[Michael Duke]

Re: A glitch in the matrix

There are two factors driving this.

1. Everyone has put prices up 10-20%.

2. What silicon is available is being put into higher price models and the cheap stuff is just not able to be ordered.

This leads to increased revenue even with long lead times.

[Richard Grimwood]

My experience is that 48/52 port POE Meraki and Cisco switches have been on 9 to 12 month lead times since April last year. This is suddenly starting to ease down to "just" a couple of months. I suspect that the POE silicon disappeared from the supply chain and Cisco have had to redesign with new chips. There will be a lot of SME switch refresh projects that have been on hold waiting for the drought to finish. So 2023/24 sales will no doubt benefit from that pent up demand .