Global sales of switching and routing gear to service providers were up 14% from a year earlier to $2.6 billion in the second quarter, according to Ovum-RHK.

"Alcatel-Lucent continued its strong IP/MPLS growth," said Mark Seery, Ovum’s vice president of switching and routing, repeating a comment he made regarding the first quarter. “Juniper Networks looks to be making a turnaround, and Cisco returned to expected revenue levels.”

That second-quarter growth edged beyond the 12% year-over-year growth Ovum attributed to the market in the first quarter.

Sales of IP/MPLS core gear were up 27% from a year earlier to $595 million, while sales at the IP/MPLS edge were up 29% to nearly $1.3 billion. Sales of IP/Ethernet gear were up 11% to $430 million.

Meanwhile, the IP transport and services equipment market grew 27% from a year earlier to nearly $1.3 billion in the second quarter. The market for Ethernet transport and services gear grew 23% to $906 million. And the market for subscriber services gear, including broadband remote access servers, grew 4% from a year earlier to $248 million.