Cisco End-of-Life (EoL/EoS): what the dates mean and what to do
End-of-Sale, End-of-Support, last-day-of-support — what each Cisco lifecycle milestone means, and how to plan a migration without surprises.
NEnetzspec — Authenticity
Authenticity desk2026-08-10 · 3 min read
Authenticity desk2026-08-10 · 3 min read
Every Cisco product runs on a published lifecycle. Missing a milestone means no software fixes, no TAC, and compliance risk. Here are the milestones that matter.
The key milestones
- EoL announcement — Cisco publishes the End-of-Life bulletin.
- End-of-Sale (EoS) — the last date you can buy it new through Cisco.
- End-of-SW-Maintenance — last bug/security fixes.
- Last-Day-of-Support (LDoS) — the hard cliff: no TAC, no RMA.
What to do
- Inventory your fleet and map each part to its milestones.
- Prioritise anything past End-of-SW-Maintenance — that is your security exposure.
- Plan the successor early; the replacement often has a different SKU and uplink layout.
- Source genuine replacements with warranty — not grey-market EoL stock.
After EoS — is it still safe to run?
Between EoS and LDoS, hardware still receives support you paid for. After LDoS, keep it only in isolated, non-critical roles. Use our EOL lookup to check any part number.