1+1=3 ... Agentic AI and GenAI Reduce Barriers to Network Automation in Network Operations

Song Pang
NetBrain Technologies

Artificial intelligence is transforming network operations (NetOps), supercharging automation, enabling new predictive capabilities, improving visibility and powering nearly continuous optimization. Two flavors of AI — generative AI and agentic AI — bring different but complementary capabilities to the latest generation of network automation platforms, with generative AI helping users to digest and understand what's happening in the network, while agentic AI enables greater automation of common tasks and faster (even autonomous) responses to anomalies.

When trained on live network data and large libraries of validated automations, GenAI and agentic AI can help NetOps teams be more productive while making networks more reliable, easier to manage and secure. And as agentic AI becomes more powerful, AI's overall usefulness to the NetOps team will increase exponentially.

Generative and Agentic AI - Improving NetOps in Different Ways

In NetOps, the volume and velocity of data can at times seem overwhelming. Generative AI excels at creating new content from existing data. By reading and interpreting raw data and turning it into human-readable content and insights, GenAI can help NetOps teams to improve their visibility of network status and streamline problem identification and resolution. Some specific use cases include:

  • Processing CLI command results: GenAI can take the raw output of CLI commands (CLI results, logs) and interpret them. For instance, if the CLI output contains a list of errors, GenAI can be used to analyze the results, correlate them with known issues or network states, and summarize the findings in a more human-understandable format.
  • Generating answers: It isn't always easy for humans to extract knowledge from data. But GenAI makes it much easier for NetOps teams (and other users) to query network data and get answers to questions or actionable insights.
  • Explaining automation results: Many NetOps teams automate tasks like firmware updates or password changes using Ansible, homegrown tools, or commercial platforms. GenAI can read and interpret the results of these automations when they're run at scale. For example, if NetOps ran an automation to update 100 Cisco routers, GenAI can check the results of each and report that 94 were successful, 4 failed due to one issue, and two failed because of a different issue.

Agentic AI, by contrast, is designed to enable autonomous, goal-directed behavior, including making decisions, based on predefined rules, triggers, or specific requests. In the case of NetOps, agentic AI can be used for:

  • Running CLI Commands: For example, agentic AI could execute CLI commands on network devices or automation tools, checking the status of routers, switches, or firewalls and adjusting configurations as needed.
  • Taking follow-up actions: After the execution of automated scripts or commands, Agentic AI can be used to read the results, understand the status, and take appropriate follow-up actions. For example, if a script encountered errors, an AI agent could re-run the task, alert administrators, or log the issue for review.
  • Creating dashboards: Agentic AI can dynamically generate and update observability dashboards based on real-time network data. This can include visualizing performance, fault detection, or resource usage, and updating the view based on the latest metrics, thresholds, or events.
  • Improving device visibility: AI agents can retrieve device basic properties, such as IP addresses, L2 & L3 neighbor, etc.

New Technology, New Challenges

While the existing and potential benefits of AI for NetOps are growing every day, the reality is that the integration of this powerful technology is still in its infancy. It's important to understand the specific challenges and limitations of this technology and set up systems and processes to manage them.

First, agentic AI requires high levels of trust and reliability. Businesses depend on their networks and outages are extremely expensive. AI must demonstrate that it can consistently make accurate diagnoses and execute effective remediation steps before network teams will be comfortable ceding a degree of autonomy to the system. For network automation platform vendors, this means rigorous testing and validation of the agentic AI models across a wide range of network scenarios and conditions. For the teams or individuals that adopt a new AI tool, this means using PoCs or a phased rollout to demonstrate that reliability and slowly win over other engineers and teams.

Another substantial challenge lies in integration with existing systems. Building AI features into existing network management tools and ensuring they are compatible with diverse network environments and a multitude of vendors is a complex technical undertaking. We shouldn't underestimate the amount of work it will take to realize the benefits of AI.

Furthermore, agentic AI models are inherently data intensive. To be successful, they need to access a large amount of high-quality network data, including configuration information, performance metrics, logs, and historical incident data. For agentic AI systems to become successful, NetOps teams may need to create new data collection mechanisms, improve data storage and processing capabilities, and develop data governance strategies.

As with any AI system, the usefulness and accuracy of the output is dependent on the quality of the training data it's built on. The ideal model for AI in NetOps is learning network know-how from human engineers; the larger the library of network automations that the AI can reference, the better it will be able to reason. But AI gets much more useful if it can use data from these automations, as well as live network data (from a digital twin) to reason or for context. All these features together add up to greater than the sum of their parts.

Song Pang is CTO at NetBrain Technologies

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1+1=3 ... Agentic AI and GenAI Reduce Barriers to Network Automation in Network Operations

Song Pang
NetBrain Technologies

Artificial intelligence is transforming network operations (NetOps), supercharging automation, enabling new predictive capabilities, improving visibility and powering nearly continuous optimization. Two flavors of AI — generative AI and agentic AI — bring different but complementary capabilities to the latest generation of network automation platforms, with generative AI helping users to digest and understand what's happening in the network, while agentic AI enables greater automation of common tasks and faster (even autonomous) responses to anomalies.

When trained on live network data and large libraries of validated automations, GenAI and agentic AI can help NetOps teams be more productive while making networks more reliable, easier to manage and secure. And as agentic AI becomes more powerful, AI's overall usefulness to the NetOps team will increase exponentially.

Generative and Agentic AI - Improving NetOps in Different Ways

In NetOps, the volume and velocity of data can at times seem overwhelming. Generative AI excels at creating new content from existing data. By reading and interpreting raw data and turning it into human-readable content and insights, GenAI can help NetOps teams to improve their visibility of network status and streamline problem identification and resolution. Some specific use cases include:

  • Processing CLI command results: GenAI can take the raw output of CLI commands (CLI results, logs) and interpret them. For instance, if the CLI output contains a list of errors, GenAI can be used to analyze the results, correlate them with known issues or network states, and summarize the findings in a more human-understandable format.
  • Generating answers: It isn't always easy for humans to extract knowledge from data. But GenAI makes it much easier for NetOps teams (and other users) to query network data and get answers to questions or actionable insights.
  • Explaining automation results: Many NetOps teams automate tasks like firmware updates or password changes using Ansible, homegrown tools, or commercial platforms. GenAI can read and interpret the results of these automations when they're run at scale. For example, if NetOps ran an automation to update 100 Cisco routers, GenAI can check the results of each and report that 94 were successful, 4 failed due to one issue, and two failed because of a different issue.

Agentic AI, by contrast, is designed to enable autonomous, goal-directed behavior, including making decisions, based on predefined rules, triggers, or specific requests. In the case of NetOps, agentic AI can be used for:

  • Running CLI Commands: For example, agentic AI could execute CLI commands on network devices or automation tools, checking the status of routers, switches, or firewalls and adjusting configurations as needed.
  • Taking follow-up actions: After the execution of automated scripts or commands, Agentic AI can be used to read the results, understand the status, and take appropriate follow-up actions. For example, if a script encountered errors, an AI agent could re-run the task, alert administrators, or log the issue for review.
  • Creating dashboards: Agentic AI can dynamically generate and update observability dashboards based on real-time network data. This can include visualizing performance, fault detection, or resource usage, and updating the view based on the latest metrics, thresholds, or events.
  • Improving device visibility: AI agents can retrieve device basic properties, such as IP addresses, L2 & L3 neighbor, etc.

New Technology, New Challenges

While the existing and potential benefits of AI for NetOps are growing every day, the reality is that the integration of this powerful technology is still in its infancy. It's important to understand the specific challenges and limitations of this technology and set up systems and processes to manage them.

First, agentic AI requires high levels of trust and reliability. Businesses depend on their networks and outages are extremely expensive. AI must demonstrate that it can consistently make accurate diagnoses and execute effective remediation steps before network teams will be comfortable ceding a degree of autonomy to the system. For network automation platform vendors, this means rigorous testing and validation of the agentic AI models across a wide range of network scenarios and conditions. For the teams or individuals that adopt a new AI tool, this means using PoCs or a phased rollout to demonstrate that reliability and slowly win over other engineers and teams.

Another substantial challenge lies in integration with existing systems. Building AI features into existing network management tools and ensuring they are compatible with diverse network environments and a multitude of vendors is a complex technical undertaking. We shouldn't underestimate the amount of work it will take to realize the benefits of AI.

Furthermore, agentic AI models are inherently data intensive. To be successful, they need to access a large amount of high-quality network data, including configuration information, performance metrics, logs, and historical incident data. For agentic AI systems to become successful, NetOps teams may need to create new data collection mechanisms, improve data storage and processing capabilities, and develop data governance strategies.

As with any AI system, the usefulness and accuracy of the output is dependent on the quality of the training data it's built on. The ideal model for AI in NetOps is learning network know-how from human engineers; the larger the library of network automations that the AI can reference, the better it will be able to reason. But AI gets much more useful if it can use data from these automations, as well as live network data (from a digital twin) to reason or for context. All these features together add up to greater than the sum of their parts.

Song Pang is CTO at NetBrain Technologies

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