400G shipments to surpass 15M switch ports by 2023; 100G close to its peak

While 400G shipments are projected to surpass 15M million switch ports by 2023, 100G shipments will peak next year, according to a report by Dell'Oro Group.

Although 100G ports are expected to peak in 2020, they'll still comprise more than 30% of data center switch ports over the next five years.

“The first wave of 400 Gbps switch systems based on 12.8 Tbps chips were introduced in the market in 2H 2018,”said Sameh Boujelbene, senior director at Dell’Oro Group. “However, we do not expect material adoption of 400 Gbps until 2020 due to the lack of high-volume, low-cost 400 Gbps optics.

"The only cloud service provider (SP) that started deploying 400 Gbps was Google, which opted for special 400 Gbps optics with an earlier time-to-market. Meanwhile, we expect other cloud service providers, for instance Amazon, Facebook or Microsoft, to keep deploying 100 Gbps, and to probably consume the 12.8 Tbps chips in the form of high–density 100 Gbps switch systems to reduce cost."

RELATED: Juniper CEO Rahim optimistic company can return to year-over-year growth by Q4

In its second quarter earnings call last month, Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim said that Juniper has started shipping its first merchant and custom silicon-based 400-gig capable products and that it plans additional 400G products throughout the course of this year and next. 

Along the same lines as Boujelbene, Rahim said that 400G won't really take off until 400G optics are available, which Juniper will ramp up in the first half of next year. Rahim also said the while the cloud providers will be the first big 400G customers, he expects service providers to be next in line.