9800-40 and 9800-80 WLC end of life announcement

[eglinsky2012]

EoL announcement recently posted for the 9800-40 and 9800-80 WLCs specifically:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/catalyst-c9800-wireless-lan-controller-eol.html

I've been wondering when EoL was going to be announced for the older 9100 series APs (like 9120/9130), but this caught me by surprise....

[Flavio Miranda]

I wouldn´t say surprise as the end of support will be 2030, 5 years ahead. Which is a lot of time for cisco devices.  Interesting is that the replacement device   seems to be almost the same. 

[Haydn Andrews]

As for the 9120s, I think the issue is regulatory approvals for the WIFI 6E/ 7 APs having external antennas not being world wide is hampering them being able to anounce the EOL on them. I wouldnt be supprised to see it by end of this year though.

[eglinsky2012]

There's end of life, and there's end of useful life. I guess I should say we've been lucky with so many AireOS releases beyond the January 2023 end of software maintenance date; 8.10.196.0 came out in May 2024, but it seems like that's the end of the line for real now. Two more years of "support" left, and "support" for 8540s these days usually comes down to "That's not getting fixed, it's end of software support, move to 9800." 8540s aren't even fully EoL and the 9800 platform we've been moving to now has EoL announced, too!

[marce1000]

  @eglinsky2012 wrote  >...and the 9800 platform we've been moving to now has EoL announced, too!
  It's not the complete series obviously , only the 9800-80/40 which have been replaced by the
  CW9800M , CW9800H1 and CW9800H2 models.

 M.

[Leo Laohoo]

---

@marce1000 wrote:
It's not the complete series obviously , only the 9800-80/40 which have been replaced by the CW9800M , CW9800H1 and CW9800H2 models.

---

Did anyone wonder why the 9800-40/-80 only?  

Because the 9800-40/-80 are multi-WNCD models.  The 9800-L are single WNCD only.  

Why is this significant?  Because Cisco developers have been unable to make the multi-WNCD models stable.  And this goes with the 9800M, 9800H1 and 9800H2. 

Cisco said the 9800M, 9800H1 and 9800H2 have more memory and higher spec CPU so why are the 9800M, 9800H1 and 9800H2 still bound by the "80%" rule?  The answer is because the same multi-WNCD crash/bugs affecting the 9800-40/-80 will be ever present with the 9800M, 9800H1 and 9800H2.  

[Leo Laohoo]

If I "read between the lines" about the EoS/EoL announcement of the 9800-40/-80, the plethora of WNCD bugs will be "exported" to the 9800M/H1/H2.  

Not only that, even though the 9800M/H1/H2 have more CPU and memory than the 9800-40/-80, the 80% rule still applies.  

Let that sink in for a moment:  Do not load more than 80% of APs in a 9800M/H1/H2 or else performance will suffer. 

[JPavonM]

A perfect example of Planned obsolescence as the replacement parts only add a little more capacity, so leading customers to swap devices.

[Rich R]

Not surprised at all -  I would have expected it soon after CW9800M , CW9800H1 and CW9800H2 were released.

And yes see Leo's comments about WNCd scaling - it's really not a great story - needs a complete re-write in my opinion when the best 9800 available can't scale as well as 8540 on multiple features!