Lower 10G Ethernet costs and growing bandwidth demands pushed the 10G Ethernet market over the $US1 billion mark for the first time in 2006, research from the Dell'Oro Group said.
The average 10G Ethernet port cost around $US4000 last year, according to the Dell'Oro Group -- a $1000 drop in price from the previous year.
Meanwhile, sales of 10G Ethernet gear hit $1.2 billion in 2006 as enterprises installed the gear to grow data centres and campus LANs, and carriers rolled out the gear as a way to aggregate broadband traffic or deliver Ethernet-based services directly to customers.
The Dell'Oro Group report said sales of 10G Ethernet gear worldwide jumped almost 60 per cent from $US760 million the previous year. Port shipments also grew dramatically: Almost 300,000 10G Ethernet ports were shipped in 2006, more than double the amount shipped in 2005.
Cisco accounted for the majority of 10G Ethernet port shipments and revenue - as it did in all other LAN switch categories. Cisco took $US810 million, or 67.5 per cent of the worldwide 10G Ethernet revenue. Sharing the remaining third of the 10G Ethernet revenue pie were Force10 Networks, Foundry Networks, Nortel, Extreme and HP ProCurve.