Feature-rich routers will drive the market

As enterprises move towards increased connectivity, demand for routers has steadily grown. Gaurav Patra and Shipra Arora take a peek at the latest trends in the router market

According to S V Ramana, converged network applications with voice, video and data over a single pipe are being looked at as the way to implement networking infrastructure

Routers, one of the sub-segments of networking, is also one of fastest growing segments in this sector. According to IDC, in the last calendar year the router market was close to Rs 460 crore and it grew by close to 22 percent to reach this mark. And considering that nationwide networks and enterprises are moving towards increased connectivity, this segment is likely to witness a healthy growth within the LAN equipment segment.

With investments in the telecom infrastructure increasing, router deployments by the telecom service providers have been on the rise. Juniper and Cisco are two major players worldwide in the carrier class market. "In India Cisco was the major player in this segment; now Juniper has started taking some share of the high-end routing market by striking deals with major telcos," informs Shekhar Avasthy, who heads the Internet, Communications and Convergence Research division at IDC India. D-Link, which used to be catering to the low-end segment of the networking market until now, is in the process of rolling out high-end switches and routers to grab marketshare. Enterprises are the main buyers for low- and mid-range routers. Apart from this, IT-enabled services sector, banks and financial institutions, SMBs and the government are the other sectors that drive this market. Enterprises in India have already started realising the benefits of network connectivity for their businesses. Wide Area Networking (WAN) is becoming a compelling need for banks, consumer companies, state governments and IT services companies. For all these organisations, wide area connectivity plays a pivotal role in driving productivity, efficiency and consumer benefits. And routers have a very critical role to play as far as wide area connectivity is concerned.

Performance is always considered to be the key as far as routing on the corporate backbone is concerned. But in addition to this, the latest routers also have the capability to keep the packets moving while integrating key features from VoIP to content processing. As far as routers for the enterprise space are concerned, today users want to handle huge amounts of data traffic and they also need flexibility to support content processing, VPNs, firewalls, load balancing, VLANs, and a lot of other functionality. Keeping this demand in mind, major vendors like Cisco and Nortel are rolling out products that offer premium performance, reliability, and scalability at a very good cost. The idea is to replace a wide range of network devices with these do-it-all boxes. "The prime reason for this trend is the network performance that the enterprise wants. It is the return on investment that is considered to be the guiding factor in this space. Today a router is seen as a device that can support various applications without affecting the performance of the network. The network needs to be ready to cater to future applications so it needs to be easily scalable too," comments Avasthy. Basically, today the challenge is to keep them from collapsing under the weight of so many responsibilities. So, most of the vendors are focusing on factors like performance, integration and cost. For example, Cisco’s 6500 provides increased functionality with more power and at a lower cost.

In a move to restructure processes, Nortel, one of the leaders in the networking space, recently created an enterprise business group that focuses on product development and sales of traditional and IP voice product, as well as Layer 2 through Layer 7 switches, firewalls, and VPN equipment. In the enterprise voice market, Nortel also plans to continue supporting legacy equipment while rolling out IP telephony products and integrating it with the legacy products. It is also expected that the company will heavily focus on carrier VoIP.

Wireless

As the wireless market is growing at a good pace, it is expected that some of the routing vendors will focus on enterprise wireless fidelity products as well. In fact, vendors have already started providing WiFi products. Avaya and Cisco have already done some deployments. Proxim, which is one of the worldwide leaders in this space, has also entered the Indian market recently. "Some of the major router vendors today are also focusing on the wireless aspect. The simple reason for this is convenience for customers as implementation of more and more wireless networks are taking place," says Pradeep Joshi, resident representative, Netcons Associates.

Today a router is seen as a device that can support various applications without affecting the performance of the network, says Shekhar avasthy

Convergence of voice and data

Another major trend in this space is the convergence of voice and data. Even most of the router majors like Cisco and Nortel are focusing on facilitating voice and data convergence. In future it is also expected that companies will continue supporting legacy equipment while rolling out IP telephony gear and integrating it with legacy products and also look at converging voice and data. "It is always the customer’s needs that drive the market. And, here RoI is the guiding factor. If a new network provides better performance and RoI then today’s CTO is ready to go in for that. However, converged voice and data networks are a thing of the future," comments Avasthy. Agrees S V Ramana, Cisco Systems’ vice president for systems engineering in India & SAARC regions, "Forward-thinking organisations are looking at converged network applications with voice, video and data over a single pipe as the way to implement networking infrastructure." In the Indian context, Avaya is focusing on this segment of the market coming up with converged networking products. Joshi adds, "Voice has always been a bigger and more lucrative market and VoIP will replace the traditional voice boxes soon."

In another development, Cisco Systems has also added automated packet prioritisation and delivery features to the core software that powers its routers and switches. These new features will simplify the deployment of quality-of-service features in enterprise networks for applications such as VoIP and Auto QoS. Auto QoS automates implementation of VoIP and IP communications in wiring closets, enterprise IP backbones, and in service provider networks. It works not only with Cisco’s IOS, but also its Catalyst operating system (Catalyst OS). Cisco will also focus on customer-indicated business, need-driven fulfilment through highly available, scalable, comprehensively secure, high performance, application aware and intelligent networking solutions leveraging the extensive capabilities of Cisco IOS (Internetworking Operating System).

As India accelerates its pace to catch up with the global Internet economy, there is a need to drive investments into setting up faster, redundant, scalable and converged networks, which will support the communications needs of an emerging market. Given India’s low level of telecommunication penetration and low investment into legacy infrastructure, there are strategic investments expected into the telecommunications sector. This, supported by the lack of basic infrastructure in smaller towns and cities in India, will provide the fillip to the router segment. SMBs and SOHO segments in these cities increasingly understand the benefits of networking. A number of service providers are investing and will continue to invest in building basic telecom infrastructure to support the demand in these cities. And, one hopes all these factors coupled with the functionalities of today’s routers is going to drive the growth of this market in India.

This segment has been witnessing a healthy growth and is one of the fastest growing categories within the LAN equipment market. "As of now I do not see any problems for the router segment. They will continue to grow until some revolutionary technology replaces them. I do not see any thing happening in the immediate future," comments Joshi. With so much development taking place in this space, one expects that the router market will continue to experience a good growth.