Where to find old/legacy Cisco Documentation

I recently acquired a pair of Cisco 2503 routers (more about which here). While I was able to get these working using generic documentation and CCNA guides, I wasn’t able to find much product specific documentation.

The only page on Cisco’s website referencing this router is a ‘retirement notification’. All this gives is a long ago date when support ended and a statement that support information may be available through search (which it isn’t).

Over the years Cisco has made various updates to their website, with documentation pages moving around, formatting changes etc. It seems that in 2017/18 they removed all product pages and supporting documentation for legacy products. Some point before this most links had become broken. Since this time, it appears product support is removed not long after the 'End of Life', which is when Cisco no longer offer paid support.

However, thanks to the Internet Archive’s WayBackMachine, various old versions of Cisco’s website are available to browse. As cisco.com is a high ranking website almost all documentation pages have been archived.

Originally, support documentation was available on a CD called ‘univercd’ (there’s a mirror here) and on the Cisco website (which also had limited product pages). The documentation site then became ‘Product Support’ and formatting was updated.

The table below contains links to WayBackMachine archived copies of the ‘product’ and ‘support’ sites for EoL products at various points in time. Products & Services links are to the switches page.

Many documentation pages also have a PDF version linked. These is worth downloading as they have much better graphics and formatting than the html version.

Some example guides/documents (PDF) for very old Cisco equipment:

• Cisco 7000 router - Product Overview
• Catalyst 5000 - Quick Installation Guide
• Catalyst 6000 Series Switch Installation Guide
• Catalyst 1700 Introduction
• Cisco 2500 Series Router Overview