Cisco Meraki MR42 EoL: Migration Guide to the Wi-Fi 6 MR44

If your wireless estate still runs Cisco Meraki MR42 access points, the clock is now the deciding factor. The MR42 (PID MR42-HW) reached End of Sale on July 14, 2022, and its Last Day of Support (LDoS) falls on July 21, 2026. After that date the hardware does not switch off, but everything that makes it safe to operate in a regulated environment does. This guide explains what each milestone means for an MR42 fleet, why the Wi-Fi 6 Meraki MR44 (PID MR44-HW) is the right successor, and how to execute the refresh cleanly. You can see the full lifecycle record on our MR42 end-of-life page.

What the MR42 milestone dates actually mean

Lifecycle dates get quoted casually, so it is worth being precise about the operational impact of each one for this specific access point.

• End of Sale — July 14, 2022: Cisco stopped selling new MR42-HW units through authorized channels. Anything you buy new today is either remaining stock or, more often, refurbished/used inventory. That date already started the support countdown.
• End of Software maintenance — not applicable as a separate published milestone for the MR42: because Meraki APs run a single cloud-delivered firmware train rather than versioned IOS-XE images, software support effectively runs to LDoS. The dashboard keeps the AP on a supported firmware branch only until the unit reaches Last Day of Support.
• Last Day of Support (LDoS) — July 21, 2026: this is the hard cutoff. After this date there are no further firmware or PSIRT security fixes for the MR42, no Cisco TAC support for issues involving it, and no hardware replacement under warranty or RMA.

The recommended replacement: Meraki MR44

Cisco names the Meraki MR44 as the direct successor to the MR42, and it is the cleanest swap available — same indoor mounting profile, same cloud-managed operating model, same dashboard. What changes is the radio generation, and that change is substantial. The MR42 is an 802.11ac Wave 2 access point with 3x3:3 MIMO and a maximum aggregate frame rate of 1.9 Gbps (1300 Mbps on 5 GHz, 600 Mbps on 2.4 GHz). The MR44 is an 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) access point with a 4x4:4 radio on 5 GHz plus a 2x2:2 radio on 2.4 GHz, and a combined aggregate frame rate of 2.7 Gbps (up to 2402 Mbps on 5 GHz).

What is concretely better

• Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) with OFDMA and uplink/downlink MU-MIMO: the MR42's Wave 2 supports only downlink MU-MIMO. OFDMA lets the MR44 subdivide each channel and service many small-frame clients (IoT sensors, VoIP handsets, medical telemetry, handhelds) in the same transmit opportunity, which is exactly where high-density rooms choke on the MR42.
• 4x4:4 on 5 GHz vs 3x3:3: the extra spatial stream and 1024-QAM raise both peak throughput and effective capacity per cell, so you serve more concurrent clients before performance degrades.
• 2.5 Gbps multigigabit uplink vs 1 GbE: the MR42's single gigabit port is a hard ceiling once the air interface exceeds 1 Gbps aggregate, which Wi-Fi 6 routinely does. The MR44's mGig port removes that wired bottleneck over the cabling you already have.
• Target Wake Time (TWT) and BSS Coloring: Wi-Fi 6 features that extend battery life for IoT/BLE devices and reduce co-channel interference in dense floor plans — neither exists on the MR42.
• Continuity of the security and location radios: like the MR42, the MR44 keeps a dedicated third radio for full-time WIDS/WIPS and RF spectrum analysis, plus an integrated Bluetooth Low Energy radio for scanning and beaconing. You do not lose any of the air-monitoring or location capability you have today.
• Cloud-managed, controller-free: both APs are managed entirely from the Meraki dashboard, so your operational model, templates, SSIDs, group policies, and Systems Manager integration carry forward unchanged.

A practical MR42-to-MR44 migration plan

1. Assess and inventory

Export your current AP list from the Meraki dashboard and tag every MR42-HW by network, floor, and switch port. Note the actual PoE budget consumed per switch and which uplinks are 1 GbE versus mGig. Pull a current heat map or RF profile so you have a baseline to compare against after cutover. Confirm each MR42's license expiry so you can size the MR44 order to your co-termination date.

2. License transition

Meraki licenses bind to the device serial and do not transfer between models, so each MR44 requires its own license (Enterprise or Advanced) at the tier you run today. The cleanest approach is to align the new MR44 license terms to your existing co-termination or per-device renewal date so the whole fleet renews on one cycle rather than drifting. Confirm whether your org is on co-termination or per-device licensing before ordering — it changes how the new units are claimed.

3. Configuration and feature parity

Because both APs share the Meraki dashboard, most of your configuration is network- and template-level, not device-level — SSIDs, RADIUS/802.1X, group policies, traffic shaping, and firewall rules all apply to the new MR44s as soon as they join the same network. Review any per-AP RF profile overrides and re-tune for Wi-Fi 6: you will typically want to enable wider 80 MHz channels on 5 GHz where the spectrum allows, since the MR44 can actually exploit them, and revisit minimum bitrate settings to push legacy clients off 2.4 GHz.

4. Physical: mount, power, uplinks

The MR44 reuses the MR42's general mounting footprint and runs on the same Cat5e/Cat6 with standard 802.3at (PoE+), so most swaps are a straight unmount-and-remount on the existing bracket and drop. To realize the 2.5 Gbps uplink, schedule mGig switch ports (Catalyst 9300/9200 mGig, or Meraki MS355/MS390) where you have the densest cells; elsewhere the MR44 runs fine on 1 GbE and still beats the MR42 on the air side. Verify your PoE budget per switch — the MR44's draw is comparable, but a full-floor refresh is a good moment to confirm headroom.

5. Phased cutover

Add the MR44s to the dashboard and stage their configuration before touching the floor. Migrate in zones — replace one coverage area, validate client roaming and throughput against your baseline, then move to the next. Because both generations cohabit the same Meraki network, you can run a mixed MR42/MR44 environment during the transition with no controller juggling and no SSID outage. Watch the dashboard for channel and power auto-optimization to settle after each zone.

6. Secure decommission

Once an MR42 is offline, remove it from the dashboard network and unclaim it from the organization so it cannot rejoin. For federal, DoD, and healthcare environments, follow your media sanitization policy: the MR42 stores configuration and keys, so a factory reset before disposal is the minimum, and units leaving a secured facility should follow your standard chain-of-custody and asset-disposal process. Retain the removed serials in your CMDB with a disposition note for audit.

Procurement notes for regulated buyers

Because the MR42 is past End of Sale, replacement urgency is colliding with refresh demand across the install base, so lead times on the MR44 and on the mGig switching to feed it can move. For US federal, DoD, and SLED buyers, confirm TAA compliance and country-of-origin documentation up front, and route purchases through GPC/contract vehicles where required. Buying through an authorized Cisco partner matters here: it guarantees genuine, warrantied hardware with valid license claiming, correct co-termination alignment, and lead-time visibility — none of which you get from gray-market MR44 stock. You can browse current access point and switching options in our catalog.