Hardware Lifecycle & Refresh Cycle Guides

Hardware lifecycle is the timing dimension of equipment retirement. When does equipment age out of useful service, why does it get retired, and how is AI changing the equation? The traditional answer was 5-to-7-year service lives driven by OEM End-of-Sale timing and slow refresh cadence. The 2026 answer is significantly more compressed, particularly for AI infrastructure where refresh cycles have shrunk to 18-36 months and rack power density has shifted from 5-15 kW to 50-140 kW per rack.

This category collects ROC Telecom’s guides on equipment lifespan, refresh cycle dynamics, and the timing decisions that determine recovery economics. The articles cover lifespans of switches, routers, and optical transport across major OEMs, the lifecycle events that drive value decay, and how AI is compressing every traditional refresh timeline.

ROC Telecom is an asset recovery and ITAD specialist focused on telecom and data center infrastructure across enterprise, hyperscale, and neocloud operators. The guides here reflect direct experience with the lifecycle decisions that determine whether operators capture or lose the recovery value embedded in their retiring infrastructure.