Cisco C9800-L-C-K9 Catalyst 9800-L Wireless Controller, Copper Uplink

A compact wireless LAN controller from the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series, running Cisco IOS XE. This is the copper-uplink model; its twin, the C9800-L-F-K9, uses SFP+ fiber uplinks.

It supports 250 access points and 5,000 clients with up to 5 Gbps throughput. Adding the LIC-C9800L-PERF performance licence raises that to 500 access points, 10,000 clients and 10 Gbps. Cisco lists 4,096 WLANs and 4,096 VLANs, and centralised, FlexConnect and fabric deployment modes.

Network ports are four 2.5G/1G Multigigabit RJ-45 ports and two 10G/Multigigabit copper ports. It also has an RJ-45 service port for out-of-band management, an RJ-45 redundancy port for high availability, RJ-45 and micro-USB console ports and a USB 3.0 port. A pair can run Stateful Switchover (SSO) through the redundancy port.

It is a half-width 1RU unit, 8.5 x 9.06 x 1.58 in and 3.95 lb (1.79 kg), so two can sit side by side with the C9800L-RMNT bracket. Power comes from an external 110 W, 12 V DC adapter (C9800-AC-110W), and maximum draw is 86.9 W. It supports Aironet 802.11ac Wave 1 and Wave 2 and Catalyst 9100 access points.

Cisco's 9800 end-of-life listing showed hardware notices for the 9800-40 and 9800-80 but not the 9800-L when checked in October 2026.

To confirm capacity, check whether the unit already carries the performance licence and how many access points the site has.

More from this family: Cisco Wireless.

Related parts: C9800-L-F-K9.