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Current State Assessment

What we're fixing — and why it matters now.

The Branch is running two campuses on end-of-life hardware, legacy AV routing, and expiring security licenses. The roadmap below resolves every issue listed here before it becomes a Sunday morning problem.

⚠ Critical — Deadline August 17th

Farmers Branch: FortiGate 100E End-of-Life

FortiGate 100E reaches end-of-life August 17th — no security patches, no support after that date.
Continuing on expired hardware exposes both campuses to unpatched vulnerabilities with no vendor recourse.
APs must be swapped before EOL or FortiGate licensing must be renewed — an unnecessary cost on dying hardware.
Phase 1 replaces the firewall and re-architects the entire network before this deadline hits.

→ Fixed in Phase 1, Q3/Q4 2026

⚠ Urgent — Deadline October 14th

Vista Ridge: FortiGate 90G Subscriptions Expiring

Annual FortiGate subscriptions at Vista Ridge expire October 14th — UTM, web filtering, and geo-blocking all go dark.
Without renewal, the US-only IP policy and category-based blocking of hosting providers lapses immediately.
Renewing buys time but locks budget into hardware that's being replaced in Phase 1 anyway.
Phase 1 transitions both sites to a modern firewall platform before the October deadline forces a costly renewal decision.

→ Fixed in Phase 1, Q3/Q4 2026

Network Issue — Both Campuses

Double NAT from AV Production Equipment

Production equipment is on separate network hubs and routers, creating double NAT scenarios at both locations.
Double NAT breaks seamless device discovery, complicates remote management, and causes unpredictable latency during live production.
Nighthawk routers in traveling cases are a recurring failure point — they drop connections and create ad-hoc network segments.
Phase 2 and 3 replace AV switches and unify the production network under a single managed topology at each campus.

→ Fixed in Phase 2 & 3

Infrastructure — Mixed Hardware

Legacy Switch Mix & Unmanaged AV Segments

Mix of old Dell PowerConnects and newer Fortinet switches across both campuses — no unified management plane.
AV hubs use consumer-grade Netgear 8-port switches (6 at FB, 6 at VR) with no VLAN support or monitoring.
5 Nighthawk routers acting as APs in AV cases are unmanaged and invisible to network monitoring.
Vista Ridge HVAC on Honeywell IoT APs needs proper VLAN isolation to prevent IoT-to-production lateral movement.

→ Fixed in Phase 2, 3 & 4

Current Equipment Inventory

What's being replaced, upgraded, or unified across both campuses

Why It's Being Replaced

End-of-life hardware, unmanaged segments, and double NAT are active risks

Farmers Branch

Non-AV Network

Access Points6EOL Aug 17

Switches (48-port)2Mixed mgmt

Switches (24-port)2Mixed mgmt

FortiGate Firewall1EOL Aug 17

AV Network

8-port Netgear switches6Unmanaged

24-port switch (booth)1Review

16-port switches3Review

Nighthawk Router/APs3Double NAT

Vista Ridge

Non-AV Network

Access Points14Oct 14 expiry

Switch (48-port)1Mixed mgmt

Switch (24-port)1Mixed mgmt

Switches (16-port)4Review

FortiGate Router1Oct 14 expiry

AV Network

24-port switches2Review

8-port switches6Unmanaged

16-port switches3Review

Nighthawk Router/APs5Double NAT

What we're fixing — and why it matters now.

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