Cisco close to releasing more AI models, this time for deep networking ops

Cisco has developed AI models that can solve networking problems and is close to releasing the tools, plus the Cloud Control agentic ops tool that puts its models to work. Cloud Control is Cisco's attempt to tame console sprawl, but creating a new interface to its product portfolio driven by agentic AI. The networking giant says Cloud Control will allow users to query their infrastructure to do things like find the source of a single glitchy connection. Today, figuring that out could see NetAdmins look for info across several product consoles. Cisco reckons Cloud Control will diagnose issues more quickly, by using agents that source and analyze data from whichever parts of its product portfolio you've deployed. DJ Sampath, senior veep and general manager of Cisco's AI Software and Platform biz, suggested agents running under Cloud Control could diagnose a single device's inability to connect to a Wi-Fi network on one floor of a building by referencing security policies that might prohibit the connection and the channels an access point offers. If the agents find a fault that requires a reboot, Sampath said Cisco's new toy can explain the blast radius of that effort so NetAdmins can understand when to press Off and On again. Cisco developed its own deep networking AI model to make that sort of thing possible and Sampath told The Register the model will shortly" appear on Hugging Face, alongside the Antares security models the company recently published. Sampath said the model "understands routing and switching configs" and therefore solves network problems better than a frontier model." He also revealed that Cloud Control, which Cisco has touted for several months, will become available to US-based customers by the end of August. The service will be included with Cisco's other products, but the company is yet to finalise pricing plans. Like other AI services, Cloud Control chews through tokens. Cisco plans to include a certain quantity of tokens with its existing subscriptions and will figure out how to charge for extra tokens. The company will also make its networking models available for on-prem use - including on collections of its own UCS servers - for those who don't want to surf the chaotic terrain that is tokenomics. Cloud Control will come to Europe and the Asia-Pacific in coming months. Sampath said the work needed to build the infrastructure Cisco needs to run it is one reason for the delay. Another is regulatory issues, because the service needs access to customers' systems and that requirement means sensitive data comes into play - as do local laws about how to make that happen with appropriate security and governance. Sampath doesn't see Cloud Control replacing Cisco's product-specific consoles anytime soon, because he thinks customers have built processes around them and trained workers to use the tools. That position perhaps validates analyst firm Gartner's prediction that the advent of AI management tools will initially mean some bloat in organizations' fleet of management tools. (R)