NEW DELHI, INDIA: Telecom networking equipment maker Brocade announced that it has so far delivered 100, two-port 100 GbE blades.

The company, which started shipping its 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) in June 2011, deployed the 100th blade at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, in November 2011.

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Many of the world’s top service providers and premier research institutes have surpassed the performance requirements that 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) can deliver via networks and applications, says the networking vendor in a release.

This growing demand and requirement for greater bandwidth is clear, according to estimates by Infonetics Research, between 2010 and 2015, 100 Gigabit port sales are expected to have a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 214 per cent compared to 58 per cent for 10 Gigabit connectivity.

“Gigabit Ethernet connectivity is still going strong in the enterprise LAN, but within performance-driven environments the CAGR is at a negative growth rate,” said Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research. “While some organizations will continue to grow incrementally by link aggregating multiple ports of 10 GbE, there is a growing group of ultra high performance research institutes and service providers that will need to jump immediately to 100 GbE to remain competitive."

In addition to CERN, Brocade has also deployed 100 GbE blades at large various Internet exchange points (IXPs), content delivery network (CDN) providers, and research organizations, such as Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), Limelight Networks and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).