As the market for service provider routers surged to $2 billion in the third quarter, according to Dell'Oro Group, some of the predictions that analysts made this time last year are proving correct.

Last year, Juniper Networks was expected to rebound in 2007 after a tough 2006 as the vendor introduced new, more Ethernet-centric gear. And Redback Networks was expected to face a threat as one of its biggest customers, BellSouth, was folded into AT&T. Both predictions appear to be borne out in the latest market data. While Juniper's service provider router revenue was up 36% in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to Dell'Oro, Redback's revenue was down 11%, putting it in fifth place. (Redback denies any decline, however, insisting its “router revenue” — Dell'Oro cited “service provider router revenue” — was up 34% year-over-year in the third quarter. After becoming part of Ericsson in January, Redback claims its SmartEdge routers have seen their three highest-selling quarters ever, though router sales declined sequentially in both the second and third quarters.)

Alcatel-Lucent continues the upward climb it has enjoyed since it acquired TiMetra in 2003 and went to market with a combination of low-cost Layer 2 aggregation and Layer 3 smarts. And Tellabs' switch and router sales saw a strong sequential increase in the third quarter, according to Ovum-RHK. But the fastest grower was Huawei Technologies, which saw service provider router revenue jump 145% in the third quarter from a year earlier.