The market for switches has been witnessing a growth rate of more than 70 percent. It is going through a consolidation phase at the moment. This increased level of activity is due to more and more enterprises setting up a LAN infrastructure and becoming more and more conscious of resource utilization. Switches enable the user to control bandwidth. In the process it makes usage of bandwidth more effective.

Switching access technology might undergo a major technology leap in the next year. Currently, most corporates use 100 Mbps for access and 1000 Mbps (1Gbps) for backbone infrastructure. This will be enhanced to 1000 Mbps (1Gbps) for access and 10,000 Mbps backbone (10 Gbps) for backbone infrastructure.

Users prefer switches because of the flexibility it provides. For instance, only a switch can allow multiple services on the same network to support voice, data and video. LAN switches and WAN routing technologies are being converged onto a single platform called switch routers. This is expected to provide another major boost to the switching segment. The convergence might see the SOHO and SME segment going in for switches in a big way.

The market is likely to witness a fight between layer-2 and layer-3 technology. Vendors like D-Link believe that Layer-2 switches will become the default in managed switches. But ultimately in the days to come, industry analysts believe that both technologies will co-exist with each other, catering to different segments of the market. For example, Layer-3 switches are defined more towards large networks with more than 100-150 users. Though it can be used by smaller networks, it is more useful as a backbone for the network.