Copper boosts Gigabit port shipments by 38%

Gigabit Ethernet found a high gear and floored it last quarter, according to the latest numbers from research firm Dell’Oro Group.

Gigabit Ethernet port shipments jumped 38% in the third quarter of this year, adding almost a million ports over the second quarter, to about 3.6 million copper- and fiber-based ports.

Dell’Oro noted that the copper version of the technology was the sole reason behind the million-port increase. Many of the ports came in the form of high-density switches intended for desktop connections to PCs.

Gigabit Ethernet is fast becoming the new standard for desktop ports. While many users don’t need that kind of bandwidth, they’re getting it anyway because the prices have come down substantially.

Cisco still leads the pack, but other vendors that saw port shipment increases above 40% included 3Com, HP and Netgear.

Meanwhile, the high end of the router market also saw a rare increase, as service providers and large enterprises started buying expensive routers again. Worldwide sales were up 20% in the third quarter, to $464 million, Dell’Oro says. That makes the third quarter of this year “the best quarter we’ve seen since the end of 2000,” Dell’Oro Principal Analyst Shin Umeda said in a statement. Two vendors were ranked by the firm, Cisco and Juniper Networks, which saw 24% and 13% growth, respectively.