25 Gigabit to generate second largest server Ethernet port volume by 2018

USA: In a newly released Five-Year Forecast Report by Dell'Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the networking and telecom industries, server network ports are expected to exceed $1.7 billion in revenue and 40 million ports by 2018.

While 10 Gbps is set to drive more than 50 percent of revenue and ports over the next five years, the recently announced 25 Gbps speed is expected to drive the second highest server Ethernet port sales and shipments by 2018.

"During the first quarter of 2014, both Broadcom and Microsoft confirmed activity around 25 Gbps solutions for server access. On July 1st, 25 Gbps technology gained additional traction, with Arista, Broadcom, Google, Mellanox, and Microsoft issuing a joint press release regarding creation of a consortium backing 25 Gbps," said Sameh Boujelbene, director at Dell'Oro Group.

"25 Gbps drives a better cost curve than 40 Gbps as most components that support 100 Gbps can be easily split to 25 Gbps. Material Capex and Opex savings can also be achieved, especially by mega cloud providers as 25 Gbps cabling infrastructure can likely support many generations of servers and network equipment. We believe that two of the large cloud providers, such as Google and Microsoft alone, could drive a 25 Gbps ecosystem."