Meraki MR24 (MR24-HW) End of Life: Migrate to Catalyst CW9164I

If you still have Cisco Meraki MR24 access points (PID MR24-HW) bridging users to your network, they are now running on borrowed time in the most literal sense. The MR24 went End of Sale on May 9, 2016, and crossed its Last Day of Support (LDoS) on May 31, 2021. As of today every MR24 in your environment is unsupported hardware: it receives no firmware updates, no security fixes, and no TAC or RMA coverage. This guide explains exactly what each of those milestones means for a Meraki-managed wireless estate, why the gap matters more than it might appear, and how to execute a clean refresh to the recommended replacement, the Catalyst CW9164I in its Meraki dashboard variant (CW9164I-MR).

What the MR24 actually is, and why it is the floor of your network now

The MR24 was a premium-tier 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) cloud-managed indoor access point. It ran dual-concurrent 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios with 3x3 MIMO and three spatial streams, which in its day made it the high-density choice over the 2x2 MR16, delivering roughly 450 Mbps per radio and about 900 Mbps of aggregate PHY rate. It took a single 10/100/1000 (1G) Ethernet uplink and drew power over 802.3af PoE. That was a strong spec in 2012. In 2026 it is a hard ceiling: 802.11n has no OFDMA, no MU-MIMO, no 6 GHz band, and its real-world goodput for a room full of modern phones, laptops, and medical or IoT endpoints is a fraction of what those clients can consume. Every device that associates to an MR24 is being dragged back to a 14-year-old air interface.

What each end-of-life milestone means in practice

End of Sale (May 9, 2016)

After EoS, Cisco no longer manufactures or sells the MR24 through authorized channels. Any unit you buy after that date is used, refurbished, or gray-market, with no factory warranty and, critically, no guarantee that it can claim a current Meraki license. EoS is the starting gun on the support clock, not the end of usability.

End of Software Maintenance

For most Cisco platforms this is the date after which no new maintenance or feature firmware ships. Meraki MR hardware is cloud-managed, so firmware is delivered centrally from the dashboard rather than downloaded per device; for the MR24 the practical effect is that the model stopped receiving new firmware trains well before LDoS and is now frozen. It will run whatever build it last pulled, with no path to current MR firmware features or fixes.

Last Day of Support (May 31, 2021)

This is the milestone that should drive your timeline. After LDoS there are no PSIRT security patches for the MR24, no bug fixes, and no Cisco TAC support or hardware RMA. If a vulnerability is disclosed in the firmware these units run, it will never be remediated on this hardware. If an MR24 dies, there is no warranty replacement. From a lifecycle standpoint the MR24 is now a static, unsupported attack surface sitting inside your trusted network.

Why acting now is not optional for regulated buyers: For federal, DoD, SLED, and healthcare environments, running hardware past LDoS is an audit and accreditation problem, not just an IT preference. Frameworks such as NIST 800-53 (SI-2, flaw remediation), CMMC, FedRAMP continuous monitoring, and HIPAA Security Rule controls all assume a vendor-supported patch path. An access point that cannot receive security updates is a documented finding waiting to happen and a clean justification for refresh budget.

The recommended replacement: Catalyst CW9164I (CW9164I-MR)

Cisco's recommended successor is the Catalyst CW9164I, ordered as CW9164I-MR for Meraki dashboard management. This is the key point for MR24 shops: you do not have to abandon the Meraki cloud or retrain your team. The CW9164I-MR is managed from the same Meraki dashboard you already use, so SSIDs, group policies, RF profiles, and templates carry forward conceptually even as the radio hardware leaps two Wi-Fi generations ahead.

What concretely gets better

• Wi-Fi generation: from 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) to 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6E). The CW9164I is tri-band, adding the clean 6 GHz band on top of 2.4 and 5 GHz, where the MR24 had no 6 GHz at all.
• Radio architecture: 2x2 on 2.4 GHz, 4x4 on 5 GHz, and 4x4 on 6 GHz, versus the MR24's single 3x3 stream count per band. Aggregate data rate rises from roughly 900 Mbps to up to 7.49 Gbps, on the order of 8x.
• Airtime efficiency: OFDMA and MU-MIMO (both uplink and downlink) let the CW9164I serve many small-frame clients in parallel, the exact density problem 802.11n handles poorly. This is the single biggest real-world gain for high-occupancy rooms.
• Uplink: from a 1G port to Multigigabit (100/1000/2.5G BASE-T), so a single AP can actually push more than a gigabit of aggregate Wi-Fi without the wired port becoming the bottleneck.
• Power: 802.3at/bt PoE+ instead of 802.3af. This is a planning item, not just an upgrade, covered below.
• IoT and location: an integrated IoT radio (Bluetooth Low Energy) for telemetry and location services, which the MR24 lacked entirely.

You can review the full side-by-side on the MR24-HW end-of-life page, and browse current Catalyst Wireless and Meraki MR options in our catalog to confirm the right model and antenna form factor for each space (the CW9164I is an internal-antenna indoor unit; high-ceiling, warehouse, or directional-coverage sites may map better to a CW9166 or CW9164D1).

A practical migration plan

1. Assessment and inventory

Export your AP list from the Meraki dashboard and filter for MR24-HW. Capture, per site: AP count and placement, the access switch each one homes to, the current PoE class drawn, and the SSID/policy set applied. Pull a recent RF heatmap or run a quick survey, because Wi-Fi 6E and 6 GHz coverage characteristics differ from 802.11n; you may consolidate AP count in some rooms and need denser placement in others. Confirm whether each closet switch can supply 802.3at/bt to every replacement port simultaneously, not just on paper but within the switch's total PoE budget.

2. License transition

The CW9164I-MR requires current Meraki licensing (per-device or per-device co-termination/subscription, depending on your account model). Plan license procurement alongside hardware so APs can claim into your dashboard and come online the moment they are mounted. Decommissioned MR24 licenses do not transfer to new hardware; treat the new APs as net-new licensed devices and reconcile your co-termination date or subscription term during the project.

3. Configuration and feature parity

Because both platforms live in the Meraki dashboard, most configuration is reusable. Validate that RF profiles are rebuilt to actually use 6 GHz and Wi-Fi 6 features (enable OFDMA-friendly settings, set minimum bitrates, and define 6 GHz SSIDs with WPA3, which 6 GHz mandates). Confirm any 802.11n-era device support: very old clients that only do 2.4 GHz still work, but lean on band steering and modern minimum data rates so they do not depress the cell.

4. Physical: rack, power, PoE, uplinks, optics

This is where MR24 refreshes most often stall. The MR24 ran on 802.3af; the CW9164I needs 802.3at/bt to unlock full radio and IoT capability. Audit each access switch: total PoE budget, per-port class, and uplink capacity. To get full value from the CW9164I's Multigigabit port, the closet switch should ideally offer mGig (2.5G) downlinks; a 1G access port will work but caps the AP. Verify ceiling mount compatibility (the CW9164I uses current Catalyst mounting brackets, not the legacy MR mount) and that uplinks from the closet back to the core have headroom for the higher aggregate throughput.

5. Phased cutover

Replace AP-for-AP in waves, one closet or floor at a time, rather than a flash cut. Mount the CW9164I, let it claim its license and pull current firmware, validate client association and roaming, then decommission the co-located MR24. Run old and new in parallel only briefly to confirm coverage; do not leave unsupported MR24 units online as permanent overlap. Keep a small bench stock during the project since there is no RMA path for any MR24 that fails mid-migration.

6. Secure decommission

Remove retired MR24s from the dashboard network so they cannot rejoin, factory reset each unit to clear stored configuration and any cached credentials, and dispose through an asset-disposition process appropriate to your sector. For federal and healthcare environments, document the removal of unsupported hardware for your audit trail; that record is part of the compliance value of the refresh, not an afterthought.

Procurement notes for regulated buyers

Source the CW9164I-MR through an authorized Cisco partner so units arrive with valid warranty, claimable Meraki licensing, and clean provenance. For US federal and DoD work, confirm TAA compliance and request GSA-schedule or contract-vehicle pricing where applicable. Wi-Fi 6E Catalyst APs and the matching Meraki licenses can carry real lead times, so order against your phased rollout schedule rather than all at once at the end. See the full lifecycle context on our end-of-life resource hub.

Get a refresh quote scoped to your sites: Share your MR24-HW count, the switches they home to, and your sites, and we will scope a CW9164I-MR migration with the right license term, PoE/mGig validation, and TAA-compliant procurement. Start at Get a Quote.