The ambitious path forward for high-speed ethernet features ever increasing speeds and growing functionality, according to a new study from Spirent.
The ethernet study reports that the demand for faster speeds is being driven by the data needs of artificial intelligence (AI). It marks AI’s rapid growth — a 10x increase in AI traffic every two years, with cluster size quadrupling every two years.
The study looks at use cases for five ethernet speeds and the anticipated port shipments for each in the 2024 to 2026 timeframe.
The study says that steady demand is driving demand for 10/25G. That demand is driven by long-tail use by small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and by 5G cell site deployments. Greater than 90 million ports will be shipped.
The 100G category will be driven by service provider edge networks and medium-sized enterprises. Greater than 65 million ports will be shipped.
The 400G category will experience waves of growth driven initially by hyperscalers’ refresh cycles. That will be followed by large enterprises, tier-2 and tier-3 cloud service providers and large telecommunications service providers upgrading their core IP networks. Greater than 40 million ports shipped.
Spirent notes that large enterprises view 400G as a cost-efficient path to 800Gand higher transmission rates. Spirent Head of Market Strategy Stephen Douglas told Telecompetitor, “We do anticipate you’ll see some of the momentum toward 400G among smaller providers in a few years.”
The company says that 800G growth initially will be driven by the need to support AI, particularly for data centers. The focus will be data centers with 51.2Tbps switches. 800G offers higher bandwidth, lower latency, enhanced energy efficiency, and more connections, future-proofing data center interconnects for years. Greater than 42 million ports will be shipped.
The1.6 terabit categoryinitially will see demand from hyperscalers growing support for AI. Greater than 8.5 million ports will be shipped. Douglas noted that while this speed was originally forecast to be available in 2027, AI-generated demand is pushing that forward to the end of 2025. Baselines available this year will enable early development of silicon, optical components and transceivers to get started.
Spirent made news of its own relatively recently with the announcement that it is being acquired by VIAVI Solutions. The purchase price was announced as £1,005 million, which was $1,277 million based on the exchange rate on March 4, 2024. The private equity firm Silver Lake will make a $400 million long-term strategic investment in VIAVI.
