On 3rd June 2024, Extreme announce the end of sale of the WiNG wireless ecosystem. It is important to note that this does not mean that your WiNG wireless will cease to function. (It means that there will be no WiFI-7 Access Points for the WiNG environment.?) It means that new features like 6GHz will not be delivered on the WiNG platforms. This is less onerous than it sounds as 6GHz usage is going to be challenging to deliver for the near future, and is unlikely to be used in Retail/Warehousing/Logistics/Manufacturing.
Existing WiNG deployments will continue to work as reliably as they always have done. Many of our customers have been using the WiNG platform for many years & will continue to do so for years to come. End of Software Support will be October 2026, which provides ample time to develop a suitable migration strategy.
Toranet have been working hard to develop a set of strategic steps to minimise the risk of migration from WiNG as & when it becomes a suitable step for our customers.
There are two primary migration options:
- Big Bang replacement
- Planned and strategic migration using zero-risk steps. Click HERE for more information.
It is understood that both approaches will require evaluation of the replacement products. Therefore it is worth noting that many of the characteristics of WiNG have been adopted into the Extreme Cloud management platform, XIQ, and allow for virtually zero-risk steps towards migration.
The big-bang replacement approach is a high-risk strategy, which would replace the existing WiNG Access Points (APs) with an alternate product. This carries many risk elements, such as cabling issues, coverage, and compatibility concerns. Another aspect of this is the scale of the replacement plan, which will have to be done out-of-hours, and could take many days to complete. It also provides no roll-back capability in case of difficult connectivity or reliability issues not found until the system is in production.
Toranet work with many customers who are risk averse, and have therefore developed a series of options which eliminate all of these risks. Extreme are also striving to reduce the cost of any such migration steps for the near future, offering discounts on both APs and XIQ.
Toranet are available to discuss the future steps which will maintain your wireless infrastructure’s reputation for reliability and stability for the next generation of Wireless LANs.
How Toranet can help
Toranet has extensive technology expertise with the Ruckus Cloudpath platform. Please contact us if you would like to discuss how Cloudpath can help secure your environment.