* Current trends driving the edge router market
Three trends are currently driving the edge router market: IPTV, carrier Ethernet and multiservice networking.
These are also the reasons why the edge router market will grow another 21% this year to just under $3.2 billion, the same rate of growth for 2005, according to Dell’Oro Group.
“Video is such a big bandwidth sucker that it’s really forced (carriers) out of a mindset of incremental change to their networks, to network transformation in the aggregation and transport areas,” says Mark Seery, vice president of IP service infrastructure research at RHK/Ovum.
Ethernet service delivery to enterprises is another key growth niche for edge routers. According to Infonetics Research, worldwide Ethernet service revenue was up 132% to $5.9 billion in 2005 and is expected to jump 280% between 2005 and 2009 to $22.5 billion.
Multiservice routing entails aggregation and provisioning of multiple Layer 2 data services – Ethernet, frame relay, ATM and private line – for enterprise service transport or delivery over an IP/MPLS core. The selling point for carriers is that they can consolidate multiple overlay networks each dedicated to one service into a single converged network supporting multiple services.
Not only is this easier for a service provider to manage, but it reduces capital and operating expenditures.
Another emerging edge router application is wireless aggregation and backhaul – the practice of taking traffic beyond its destination and then back to it in order to reduce expense or accommodate changing transmission patterns. Infonetics says wireless backhaul is “one of the hottest market segments now and for the next five years.”
Infonetics recently surveyed 29 incumbents, IXCs, ISPs, and competitive LECs, each with average annual revenue of $13.5 billion in 2005. Over 50% offer mobile voice and data services and of these 73% build their own transport network to do the backhauling.
