Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series — End-of-Life & EOSL Dates

The Catalyst 3850 is a stackable access and aggregation switch built on Cisco's UADP ASIC, sold in 24- and 48-port copper models with PoE+ and 60W UPOE, Multigigabit models running 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps per port, and fiber models up to 48 SFP+ ports with fixed 40G QSFP+ uplinks. StackWise-480 joins up to nine switches into one 480 Gbps stack under a single management address, and StackPower pools power supplies across four members.

It was positioned for the campus wiring closet carrying converged wired and wireless traffic: a switch or stack terminates up to 40 Gbps of wireless capacity as an integrated controller for up to 100 access points and 2,000 wireless clients on the same IOS XE image. Interchangeable uplink modules run from four 1G ports to dual 40G QSFP+, and the SFP+ and Multigigabit models add AES-256 MACsec link encryption.

Stackable enterprise access switch. Copper and fiber SKUs were retired on separate schedules — copper support ended in 2025, fiber runs to 2027.

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series has mixed lifecycle status. Some SKU groups are already past Cisco end of service while others run until Apr 2027. Confirm the exact part number before any support or refresh decision. For past-EOSL units, weigh third-party maintenance, spares, replacement, or a documented run-to-failure. Cisco’s named migration path: Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series / Cisco Catalyst 9300/9300X and 9500.