Juniper announced the end of life of the EX4600 on June 29, 2026. The last day to order one from Juniper is December 29, 2026, two months from now. Juniper support for the platform runs on for five more years, to December 29, 2031.
The notice is Juniper technical support bulletin TSB109286, and it covers the whole EX4600 line in one stroke: the switch in every airflow and power version, its spare chassis, its licence, both of its expansion modules and the bundles built around it.
The dates
These rows are taken from Juniper's EX Series hardware dates and milestones page, read on October 28, 2026. The EX4550 row is there for comparison: it is an earlier Juniper EX switch with fixed 10GbE ports and expansion slots, retired in 2019.
| Milestone | EX4600 (TSB109286) | EX4550 |
|---|---|---|
| EOL announced | 2026-06-29 | 2019-02-01 |
| Last order | 2026-12-29 | 2019-06-30 |
| End of hardware failure analysis | 2027-12-29 | 2020-06-30 |
| End of engineering | 2029-12-29 | 2024-06-30 |
| End of support | 2031-12-29 | 2024-06-30 |
Which part numbers the bulletin covers
TSB109286 lists these part numbers, grouped here by what they are:
- The switch: EX4600-40F-AFO and EX4600-40F-AFI (AC power), EX4600-40F-DC-AFO and EX4600-40F-DC-AFI (DC power), and the EX4600-40F-AFO-T and EX4600-40F-AFI-T versions.
- The spare chassis: EX4600-40F-S.
- The licence: EX4600-AFL.
- The expansion modules: EX4600-EM-8F and QFX-EM-4Q.
- Bundles: B-EX4600-40FI-EDU and B-EX4600-40FO-EDU, and the B-EX460040FI and B-EX460040FO bundles with -3M2-E and -5M2-E endings.
The AFO and AFI endings are the airflow. AFO units move air front to back, AFI units back to front, and the two cannot be mixed in a rack built for one direction. Our guide to airflow suffixes covers how Juniper's letters compare with Arista's.
The spare and the licence follow the switch. The EX4600-40F-S is the spare-chassis part number, and the EX4600-AFL is the switch's advanced feature licence; both reach every milestone on the same dates as the hardware itself, so a spare or a licence from Juniper is also ordered by December 29, 2026 or not at all.
The two expansion modules are worth noting on their own. An EX4600 with an EX4600-EM-8F or a QFX-EM-4Q installed is one system as far as this bulletin goes: the modules carry the same dates as the switch they sit in.
What Juniper's milestones mean
Juniper's table has a column for each step of the retirement, and each step ends a different part of Juniper's commitment:
- EOL announced is the day the bulletin goes out. Nothing changes for an installed switch on that day.
- Last order closes the maker's order book. After December 29, 2026, Juniper takes no new orders for these part numbers.
- End of hardware failure analysis ends Juniper's investigation of why a returned unit failed, one year after the last order.
- End of engineering is the day Juniper stops writing new software fixes for the platform, three years after the last order.
- End of support is the last day Juniper's support center takes a case on the EX4600 and the last day a Juniper support contract covers it, five years after the last order.
Five years, the same as the EX4550
The EX4550 is a useful guide to what the next five years look like, because Juniper followed the same spacing with it. Its last order date was June 30, 2019 and its end of support was June 30, 2024: five years apart, just as the EX4600's December 29, 2026 last order and December 29, 2031 end of support are.
The steps in between differ a little. Failure analysis ends one year after the last order in both. The EX4550's engineering ended together with its support, five years out; the EX4600 bulletin ends engineering at three years, two years before support. In both cases the switches themselves kept running well past every date: an end-of-support date ends the maker's side of the relationship, not the hardware.
What the dates change for a network running EX4600s
A switch does not stop forwarding traffic on any of these dates. The EX4600 in a rack today behaves the same way in 2027 and in 2031. What changes is what Juniper will do for it.
For planning, three points follow from the table:
- New units from Juniper end on December 29, 2026. After that, an EX4600 comes from installed spares or the secondary market.
- Software fixes continue to December 29, 2029. Until then Juniper keeps fixing bugs on the platform.
- Support contracts run to December 29, 2031. A network that needs a maker contract has five years of cover from the last order date.
A network that mixes EX4600s with other switches should be planned around the earliest date among them, the same way a stack is.
What we list
The Juniper EX4600 page holds every EX4600 listing, and the Juniper switches page holds the wider EX and QFX range. Part numbers listed today include:
Each unit is tested in-house before it ships, and anything not listed can be quoted, including matched airflow and power versions for a rack that is already built.
