Datacenter Ethernet switch sales jumped 61% year-on-year to just over $10 billion in Q1 2026, according to IDC data, outpacing the broader server market's 30.4% growth to $122.62 billion over the same period.

Total Ethernet switch revenue reached $15.36 billion in the quarter, up 39.8% YoY. Datacenter switches drove the bulk of that expansion, while edge and campus segments grew a more modest 12.3% to $5.35 billion.

Where is the growth concentrated?

The split shows where AI compute spending is hitting the wire:

• Datacenter Ethernet switches: $10 billion+, up 61% YoY
• Edge and campus switches: $5.35 billion, up 12.3% YoY
• Overall server market: $122.62 billion, up 30.4% YoY
• Total Ethernet switch market: $15.36 billion, up 39.8% YoY

Some of the revenue lift reflects higher component prices, particularly for switches with embedded DRAM used as auxiliary storage.

Who is leading the datacenter vendor race?

Nvidia topped datacenter Ethernet switch sales with $2.1 billion in Q1 2026, up 2.9x YoY. The figure covers SpectrumX Ethernet switches only and excludes cables, NICs, DPUs, and InfiniBand revenue.

Cisco's datacenter Ethernet revenue rose 43.2% to $1.78 billion. Arista Networks trailed Nvidia by a narrow margin at $2.07 billion, up 40.1% YoY. Nvidia ships only to datacenters, while Cisco and Arista also serve edge and campus buyers.

IDC did not publish a vendor share chart with this dataset. The researcher moved its quarterly Ethernet data to a blog post and dropped separate ODM disclosures.

How fast are port speeds moving?

Switches with native 800 Gb/sec ports generated $3.58 billion in Q1 2026, a 10.3x YoY increase. That figure slipped 14.3% sequentially from Q4 2025, a typical seasonal pattern.

The 800 Gb/sec class now represents 35.8% of datacenter Ethernet sales. Native 200 Gb/sec and 400 Gb/sec ports claimed another 34.1% of the market at $3.41 billion, down 10.4% YoY and 52% sequentially.

Cost per Gb/sec tells a similar story:

• 800 Gb/sec native: $0.61 per Gb/sec
• 200/400 Gb/sec blended: $0.53 per Gb/sec
• 100 Gb/sec native: roughly $1.22 per Gb/sec
• 10 Gb/sec native: above $1.22 per Gb/sec
• 1 Gb/sec native: $10 to $11 per Gb/sec

The estimates assume declining costs per bit across ASIC generations. By the analyst's reckoning, port counts rose 22x and per-port costs fell more than half year-on-year.

What is happening in the router market?

Router revenue rose to $3.75 billion in Q1 2026, up 11.3% YoY. Service providers and "cloud SPs" generated $2.9 billion, or 77.2% of router sales, growing 12.9%. Enterprise router sales reached $867 million, up 6.1%.

Regional performance diverged sharply:

• Americas: +19.6%
• EMEA: +9.8%
• Asia/Pacific: +2.8%

Modern switch ASICs from Broadcom, Marvell, and Cisco embed routing functions, yet dedicated routers still move. DriveNets sells a Network Cloud router OS that runs on commodity hardware for buyers seeking hyperscaler-style disaggregation. Cisco, Juniper Networks, and Huawei Technologies remain the principal commercial router vendors.

Where does the US stand globally?

Years of IDC data show US datacenter capex outpacing every other region. Datacenter switch sales grew roughly five times faster than edge and campus switches in Q1 2026, with AI training and inference workloads pulling bandwidth demand upward.

The pattern points to a sustained US lead in AI infrastructure investment, with 800 Gb/sec adoption accelerating and Nvidia pulling ahead of incumbents in the datacenter segment.