The networking industry's secret is out: 10/100 Ethernet still dominates switch sales.
A trend on the part of network switching vendors threatens to blow the lid
off the networking industry's dirty little secret: While the majority of
industry switch revenue is from Gigabit Ethernet, most switch ports shipped
today are still 10/100 Ethernet.
Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve unit on Feb. 5 will become the latest network
switch vendor to release brand new 10/100 Ethernet edge switches for customers
upgrading their networks. ProCurve joins others such as Extreme Networks,
3Com and Nortel Networks, who have come out with new 10/100 Ethernet switches
within the last 12 months.
With the costs coming down for Gigabit Ethernet, why not just make them
10/100/1000 switches?
"Network managers tend to be less concerned with bandwidth on the
LAN
than they are concerned with security, voice support, Power over Ethernet
[PoE], wireless
LAN support-all that," said
Abner Germanow, an industry analyst with market researcher
IDC. "To
the extent they can get those functions enabled, that often takes precedence
over a Gigabit connection that would be highly underutilized and suck more
power." Germanow said that 60 percent of all switch ports shipped are
still 10/100 ports.
Toward that end, ProCurve's new Switch 2610 Series stackables, which replace
the Switch 2600 Series, add enhanced security, improve VOIP (voice over IP) support,
improve traffic monitoring and deliver greater flexibility, according to Rich
Horsley, the company's product marketing manager.
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