29.3% of the World's Ethernet SwitchingWide moat

Cisco's switching franchise is still the biggest single piece of the installed base. IDC put Cisco's Ethernet switching revenue at $4.5 billion in the first quarter of 2026, a 29.3% share of the market, up 24.0% on a year earlier¹.

Where that revenue comes from is the point. Non-data-centre switching, the campus and branch equipment in offices, hospitals, schools and factories, was 60.5% of Cisco's switching revenue and grew 14.1%; data-centre switching grew 43.0%². The data-centre business is growing faster, but the franchise rests on the campus.

The campus is where Cisco's advantages compound. The buyers are IT departments with small teams, long equipment lives and a strong preference for one vendor's management tools. They buy through channel partners who are trained on Cisco. Arista's own pages in this collection call the enterprise Cisco's fortress, and describe it as the market Arista is only now entering.

The share is not a monopoly. It is a large minority held across a very wide customer base, and it is defended by habit and service contracts more than by technology.

The market itself is growing fast. IDC reported that the data-centre Ethernet switching market surged 39.8% to $15.4 billion in the first quarter of 2026³. Cisco's total switching revenue grew 24.0%⁴, faster in the data centre and slower in the campus, so its overall share depends on which half of the market grows faster.

The share figure is the one to track, not the growth rate. A campus share falling below a quarter of the market while the data-centre business booms would mean Cisco is winning the new market and losing the one its moat was built on.