High-Speed Ports to Dominate the Market by 2029
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – August 6, 2026 – According to a recently published report by Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, the need to refresh unsupported equipment is driving the Campus Ethernet Switch market, and threats exposed by AI models such as Mythos will accelerate the replacement urgency.
“Enterprises are focusing on security audits and IT equipment replacement, after reports of rogue AI agents hacking firms have heightened fears of breaches,” said Siân Morgan, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Supporting multi-gig interfaces and more Power over Ethernet (PoE) becomes critical when replacing older switches. “We foresee that by 2029, the Campus Switch market will no longer be dominated by sales of 1 Gbps ports. Instead, sales of higher speed ports, from 2.5 Gbps to 400 Gbps, will make up over half of Campus Switch revenues,” continued Morgan.
Additional highlights from the Campus Ethernet Switch 5-Year July 2026 Forecast Report:
- Vendors are preparing for the expansion of industrial networks, fueled by physical AI.
- Revenue from modular form factors has been outpacing the market recently, but the trend is expected to reverse in 2026.
- Richer feature sets, including AIOps functionality, are expected to drive up vendor software revenues.
- Wi-Fi 7 adoption and an earlier introduction of Wi-Fi 8 will grow multi-gig access demand.
The Dell’Oro Group Campus Ethernet Switch 5-Year Forecast Report offers a complete overview of Ethernet switches built and optimized for deployment outside the data center, to connect users and things to the Local Area Networks. The report contains tables covering manufacturers’ revenue, average selling prices, and port/unit shipments by speed (100 Mbps, 1/2.5/5/10/25/40/50/100/400 Gbps Ethernet), plus regional breakouts. To purchase this report, please contact dgsales@delloro.com.
Dell’Oro Group is a market research firm that specializes in strategic competitive analysis in the telecommunications, security, enterprise networks, and data center infrastructure markets. Our firm provides in-depth quantitative data and qualitative analysis to facilitate critical, fact-based business decisions. For more information, contact Dell’Oro Group at +1.650.622.9400 or visit www.delloro.com.
# # #
