The world is facing a lot of challenges at the moment and this has caused issues for everybody. Cisco is reacting to these challenges by changing some of their previously published EoL Schedules to extend the life of some devices. This will help customers to run their existing equipment for longer, without losing support from the manufacturer.

The tables below describes the EoL schedules for the most common things I come across in my day job. Perhaps the most important date to track is the End of Sec Vuln date; this is the point at which Cisco will no longer provide security vulnerability fixes and running equipment past this date carries increased risk.

All dates are in yyyy-mm-dd format, and are correct as of 2022-03-20.

EoL Schedule: Wireless LAN Controllers

EoL Schedule: Wireless Access Points

EoL Schedule: AireOS

EoL Schedule: IOS-XE

Issues

There is some contradiction in these dates at the time of writing. The issue is with how the x700 series APs’ EoL schedule compares to the 17.3 EoL schedule. Take Security Vulnerability cover for example. The x700 EoL schedule says we can expect cover up to January 2024, but the latest code those APs can run is v17.3. The v17.3 EoL schedule currently has a Security Vulnerability end date of September 2023. It’s only four months difference, but those four months might matter to somebody, somewhere. I hope we’ll see more updates from Cisco in the coming weeks to address this (presumably through a revised 17.3 EoL schedule), but until that happens, this ambiguity remains.

Planning for the future

These extended EoL schedules provide a welcome reprive, but the pressure is still on for those running older equipment. Leadtimes for new equipment remaining lengthy and subject to variation based on the various situations relating to Shipping, Brexit, COVID Lockdowns, Wars, etc. Planning ahead and getting orders in much earlier than we’re used to will be key to success here.

The next big things that will drive change are the adoption of the WiFi-6e via Cisco’s Catalyst 9136 WiFi-6e Access Point (which is only supported on the 9800-Series WLCs), and the End of Software Maintenance dates in January 2023 for the final AireOS Wireless LAN Controllers.

If you need to refresh your infrastructure, the current suggested equipment is:

Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless LAN Controllers

Available as Virtualised (ESXi, Hyper-V, KVM, AWS, GCP or Azure) or Physical Appliances, the 9800 comes in a range of sizes:

You can read more about Cisco’s Catalyst 9800 Wireless LAN Controllers at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/index.html

Cisco Catalyst 9100 Series Wireless Access Points

The entire Catalyst 9100 AP range supports WiFi-6, with types of Access Point to suit every kind of environment.

You can read more about Cisco Catalyst 9100 WiFi-6 Access Points at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/catalyst-9100ax-access-points/index.html