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The Ethernet switch market experienced a rebound in the second quarter of 2009, with North America reportedly having the largest sequential quarter-over-quarter gain of 19 percent, according to the latest market research analysis and report by Infonetics Research

In the “Ethernet Switches and Application Delivery Controllers” report, analysts said Ethernet switch market grew by 5 percent sequentially quarter-over-quarter in 2Q09 to register revenue of $3.4 billion globally, and that Web-managed Ethernet switch revenue and port shipments increased to more than 10 percent in Q209.

"Given the market freefall in the first quarter of the year and continuing doubts about worldwide economic conditions, it is good news that spending on Ethernet switches increased 5 percent this quarter,” said Matthias Machowinski, author of the report directing analyst for enterprise voice and data and end user buying trends at Infonetics Research (News - Alert). “While the Ethernet switch market is down 24 percent from this time last year, sales are moving up instead of down, and, based on vendor guidance, it looks like the market will see more growth in the coming quarter as well."

Infonetics Research said that 10 Gigabits per second Ethernet and 1G Power over Ethernet switch port shipments went up, while most other categories were not encouraging, and said that the biggest year-over-year climber was the 10G PoE switch port category, which grew a healthy 33 percent.

PoE is reportedly a system that transfers both electrical 48 Volts DC power and data, and related equipment generally has at least one RJ45, which is an international standard data and direct current connector for eight positions eight contacts.

Analysts at the marketing research firm said F5 Network's Application Delivery Controller revenue share increased while Cisco's decreased in 2Q09, giving F5 the clear lead for two consecutive quarters, but emphasized that the overall ADC (News - Alert) market showed no overall growth at all in 2Q09.

A possible reason for F5’s ADC lead may be its reported introduction of BIG-IP ADC as an optional part of Hewlett-Packard’s HP ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem, which lets customers build a complex network infrastructure by choosing from an array of select dual direction and compatible solutions, and also to pick a vendor from those listed and approved. Eventual customer-requested combinations are first tested and certified and then only passed on to the buyer.

A recent analysis by Infonetics Research titled, “CES (News - Alert) and Router Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey,” reportedly positioned Cisco (News - Alert) as the market leader in CES, or Carrier Ethernet Switches, and another research effort by the Dell’Oro Group, as part of the Ethernet SwitchFive-Year Forecast Report, predicted the total Ethernet Switch market would decline almost 20 percent in 2009 and would be the sharpest decline since 2001, but after this dip the market would begin to rebound in 2010.