End of Life vs End of Service Life in Networking

Last updated: September 2026. Rewritten to reflect the current published lifecycle policies of Arista, Juniper, and Cisco, with links to each manufacturer’s policy and to our per-vendor end-of-life date lists.

When a manufacturer announces that a switch or router you run is reaching “end of life,” the notice usually contains several dated milestones, and the terms are not used the same way by every vendor. This article explains what end of life, end of sale, end of service life, and end of support mean in networking, how Arista, Juniper, and Cisco each define their milestones, and what each milestone means in practice for equipment you own, equipment you are considering buying used, and equipment you plan to sell.

The Short Answer

End of sale is the last day you can order the product new from the manufacturer. End of support (also called end of service life, end of service, or last date of support, depending on the vendor) is the last day the manufacturer provides technical support, hardware replacement, and software maintenance for it. End of life is the umbrella term for the whole process, and in some vendors’ notices it names the final milestone specifically. The gap between end of sale and end of support is typically several years, and during that gap the hardware is fully supported even though it can no longer be bought new.

The hardware itself does not stop working at any of these dates. What changes is who will support it, whether the manufacturer will still ship replacement parts, and whether new software releases are available.

What Is End of Life (EOL)?

In everyday usage, “end of life” means a product the manufacturer has retired. In vendor notices it is more specific. Arista uses End of Life to mean the last day of support: the end of TAC access, hardware replacement, and software maintenance, five years after end of sale under its current policy. Juniper and Cisco use “End of Life” for the announcement that starts the process, and then define separate milestones for last order date, end of engineering or software maintenance, and end of support.

Because of this, “this switch is EOL” can mean either “it is no longer sold” or “it is no longer supported,” and the two situations are years apart. Always read the milestone table in the notice rather than the headline.

What Is End of Sale (EOS)?

End of sale, also written as last order date or last day to order, is the last day the manufacturer accepts new orders for the product. After this date the product can only be obtained on the secondary market, but manufacturer support continues under the terms of the notice, typically for several more years. This is the point at which a platform starts to become available in volume as refurbished equipment, and it is usually the period in which buying used offers the largest saving against a still-supported platform.

What Is End of Service Life (EOSL) or End of Support?

End of service life, end of support, or last date of support is the final milestone. After this date the manufacturer no longer provides technical assistance, hardware replacement, or software fixes, and support contracts can no longer be renewed. The equipment continues to run, and it can still be maintained through third-party maintenance providers and spares from the secondary market, but the manufacturer is no longer involved.

Between end of sale and end of support, manufacturers usually phase support down in stages: software bug fixes and new releases end first, then hardware failure analysis, then finally TAC support and replacement parts. The exact stages and their timing are set by each vendor’s policy.

How Arista, Juniper, and Cisco Define the Milestones

Arista

Arista publishes an end-of-sale notice for each platform. Under its Five Year End of Life Policy, which applies to products from September 2018 forward, the milestones are:

End of Sale: the last day to order the product, six months after the end-of-sale announcement is posted.
Software bug fixes: up to three years after end of sale, after which Arista makes commercially reasonable efforts to address critical security vulnerabilities.
End of Life: the last day to get support, including hardware repair or replacement and 24×7 TAC support under a valid service contract, five years after the end-of-sale date. Service contracts can be renewed up to one year before end of life.

Older Arista platforms announced before that policy fell under a three-year policy. For dates by part number, see our Arista end of life list and, for current-generation replacements, our Arista end of life replacement guide.

Juniper

Juniper’s End-of-Life Policy and Procedure defines the following milestones, each dated in the individual end-of-life notification:

Last Order Date (LOD), also called End of Sale: the last date on which purchase orders can be placed for the product and for new support contracts on it.
End of Engineering (EOE): the date after which Juniper is no longer committed to provide engineering-level support such as bug fixes, further main releases, maintenance releases, or patches.
End of Hardware Failure Analysis (EOHFA): the date after which Juniper is no longer committed to root-cause hardware failures.
End of Support (EOS): the last date to receive maintenance support, including access to technical support engineers, software releases, online tools, and hardware replacement.

Note that Juniper uses “EOS” for End of Support, while Arista and Cisco use it for End of Sale. Juniper’s published milestone tables show end of support for recent hardware falling several years after the last order date; for example, the QFX5100-96S family had a last order date of December 31, 2022 and an end of support date of December 31, 2027. For dates by part number, see our Juniper end of life list and our Juniper QFX end of life replacement guide.

Cisco

Cisco’s End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Policy has the most milestones. For hardware, the standard intervals are:

End-of-Life announcement: typically six months before the end-of-sale date.
End-of-Sale: the last day to order; the last customer hardware ship date is three months later.
End of routine failure analysis: one year after end of sale.
Software support: for operating system software, critical bug fixes for the first year after end of sale, further bug fixes for two more years, and TAC support for three years, except that the final OS release on end-of-sale hardware is supported through the last date of support.
Last Date of Support (LDoS): five years after end of sale, the last day for TAC support and replacement parts. New or renewed support contracts can be added up to one year after end of sale, provided they end no later than the last date of support.

What the Milestones Mean for Equipment You Already Own

At end of sale: nothing changes operationally. You can no longer buy additional units or spares new from the manufacturer, so if you plan to keep the platform for several years, this is the time to source spares, and refurbished units are usually the practical way to do it.

Between end of sale and end of support: the platform is still fully supportable under a manufacturer contract, but software maintenance winds down first. Plan any operating system upgrades while releases are still being produced, and decide before the contract-renewal cutoff whether you will stay on manufacturer support, move to third-party maintenance, or self-spare.

After end of support: the hardware keeps running, but the manufacturer will not open cases, ship replacements, or fix software. Options at this point are third-party maintenance (BrightStar Systems offers data center third-party maintenance services), self-sparing with refurbished units, or replacement with a current-generation platform. Security is the main consideration: a device that will never receive another software fix should sit behind appropriate controls, and this is usually the deciding factor for anything internet-facing.

What the Milestones Mean When Buying Used

Most of the refurbished switches and routers on the market are somewhere between end of sale and end of support, and a large share of the savings comes precisely from the fact that the platform is no longer sold new. A few points to check before buying:

Where the platform sits in its lifecycle. A platform two years past end of sale under a five-year policy still has three years of manufacturer support available if you hold or can add a contract; a platform past end of support does not.
Whether you actually need manufacturer support. Many operators run post-end-of-sale gear on third-party maintenance or with cold spares and never open a manufacturer case. The hardware is mature and its failure modes are well understood.
Software. You will be running the final supported release train. Confirm it has the features you need before you buy.
The seller’s testing and warranty. Since the manufacturer warranty does not transfer, the seller’s warranty is the one that matters.

Every unit BrightStar Systems sells goes through our 9-Point Quality Control and Testing Process, which includes inspection for physical damage, serial number verification, checking that mounting hardware is present, cleaning, power supply and fan testing, restoring factory default settings, testing every physical port, a burn-in of at least one hour after full operating temperature is reached, and verification that all modules are operational and error-free. Equipment ships with our 1-year in-house warranty for end users (90 days for resellers); if a unit fails to perform to the manufacturer’s specifications during the warranty period, we repair, exchange, or refund it within ten working days of receiving it back at our warehouse. Our guide to buying used network equipment covers the rest of the evaluation.

What the Milestones Mean When Selling

Resale value follows the lifecycle. Demand and pricing for a platform are usually strongest in the window after end of sale, when operators who standardized on it can no longer buy it new and are looking for additional units and spares. Value declines as end of support approaches and again after it passes, because the pool of buyers willing to run unsupported hardware is smaller. If you are retiring a platform, the best time to sell it is as soon as it comes out of the rack rather than after it has sat in storage through another milestone.

BrightStar Systems buys end-of-sale and end-of-support Arista, Juniper, Cisco, and NVIDIA/Mellanox equipment from enterprises, data center operators, service providers, and ITAD firms. We provide a written offer within one business day, pay the freight, and pay by ACH or wire within five business days of testing completion. See how to sell used network equipment for the full process, or request a quote for equipment you want to sell or replace.