The 6 Hottest AI Networking Tools On The Market Right Now

Meet the AI networking products and services that are helping to simplify network operations for IT teams and channel partners, while increasing efficiency and reducing costs.

Arguably one of the most popular buzzwords in the IT industry today is AI, but some vendors aren’t just talking the talk. AI within the networking context is about simplifying network operations for IT teams and channel partners, while increasing efficiency and reducing costs, which then translates into a boosted experience for end users.

Networking heavyweights and startups alike are currently developing and coming to the market with their own flavors of AI networking products and services. Like in the case of Cisco Systems and Nvidia, some vendors are choosing to combine their strengths and jointly release offerings to ease the network management burden. Others, like HPE, are making acquisitions related to AI technology that can be embedded into their networking portfolios.

The benefits of AI-powered networking are obvious, so here are a handful of the hottest AI networking tools and offerings that are on the market today that solution providers should know about right now.

Arista Etherlink AI Platforms

Arista Networks in June introduced three Arista Etherlink AI platforms, which the company said was designed to provide optimal network performance for the most demanding AI workloads, such as training and inferencing.

The Arista Etherlink AI portfolio can support AI cluster sizes ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of XPUs with efficient one and two-tier network topologies that deliver enhanced application performance compared to more complex multi-tier networks, while also offering advanced monitoring capabilities including flow-level visibility. The three platforms included are the 7060X6 AI Leaf switch family, the 7800R4 AI Spine and the 7700R4 AI Distributed Etherlink Switch (DES), which supports the largest AI clusters.

The new AI platforms are powered by the new AI-optimized Arista (Extensible Operating System) EOS features, according to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Arista.

Cisco Nexus HyperFabric AI cluster solution

Revealed at Cisco Live in June in combination with chipmaker NVIDIA, the tech giant announced the Cisco Nexus HyperFabric AI cluster solution, which brings together Cisco AI-native networking with NVIDIA accelerated computing and AI software. The offering, according to Cisco, was designed to enable customers to focus on AI-driven innovation and new revenue opportunities rather than IT management.

The premise-based offering gives users one place to design, deploy and monitor AI pods and data center workloads. It guides users from design, to validated deployment, to monitoring and assurance for AI infrastructure. The offering lets users take advantage of cloud management capabilities for deploying and managing large scale fabrics across data centers, colocation facilities and edge sites. It combines Cisco's Ethernet switching expertise, which has been integrated with NVIDIA's accelerated computing and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software.

HPE Aruba Networking Central

HPE Aruba's flagship network management tool is being jam packed with more AI features. Specifically, HPE Aruba Networking Central is being integrated with technology from OpsRamp, which HPE acquired in 2023, for expanded observability. OpsRamp technology will provide more context and networking insights with the addition of views into network devices such as wireless access points, switches, firewalls, and routers across a range of vendors, according to HPE Aruba.

HPE Aruba Networking Central’s Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) capabilities are also being expanded. HPE Aruba Networking User Experience Insight (UXI) monitoring, which HPE Aruba brought in via its acquisition of Cape Networks in 20218, has been integrated into Central's interface, enabling continuously monitor service level agreement (SLA) adherence from user to the application from a single pane of glass.

Additionally, HPE Aruba Networking Central’s device management will now include a common configuration model across HPE Aruba Networking wired, wireless, and gateway products, new hierarchical configurations capabilities, and 90 new APIs to simplify network configurations at scale, according to the company.

The updates to HPE Aruba Networking Central will be going into public preview for partners and end customers on October 1.

Juniper Networks AI-Native Networking Platform

In what the company referred to as a first for the networking industry, Juniper Networks in January revealed its AI-native networking platform that unifies all campus, branch and data center networking operations via a common AI engine and the Mist Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA). Juniper's AI-powered networking platform has been trained on seven years of insights and data science development. The platform uses AI to assure that every connection is reliable, measurable and secure for every device, user, application and asset, according to the company.

Juniper said that the benefits of its platform include up to 90 percent fewer networking trouble tickets, up to an 85 percent reduction in networking OpEX and up to 50 percent less time necessary to reach networking incident resolution.

Nile AI Services Platform

Nile, the next-generation networking services provider that emerged onto the scene in 2022, unveiled an AI services platform with AI applications aimed at automating network design, configuration and management in March.

The latest platform includes the Nile Services Cloud, which includes AI-based network design; the Nile Service Blocks, which automates network deployment including access point configuration and Nile Copilot and Nile Autopilot applications for AI-based network monitoring and operations. The company said that the platform brings together integrated security, cloud native service delivery, and AI-powered closed-loop automation for campus and branch IT infrastructures for enterprises that need to reimagine the way their networks are designed.

San Jose, Calif.-based Nile, which is backed by former Cisco CEO John Chambers, calls itself an "AI networking pioneer."

Riverbed IQ 2.0

Riverbed in May in a major product launch for the company introduced an open, AI-powered observability platform aimed at filling in the blind spots that exist in complex IT environments that include public cloud and remote work environments, as well as zero trust and SD-WAN architectures.

The AI-powered platform, which is available now through channel partners, works by collecting full-fidelity data across a customer’s entire IT stack, including from networks, IT infrastructure, applications, user experience, endpoints, and the cloud. The platform applies AI to the data, including data from third party tools, to provide analysis and correlation, where root cause identification is determined, and automated remediations begin, reducing IT troubleshooting time and costs. The reporting can also be done through integrations with third-party IT services management tools, such as ServiceNow, the company said.

The latest platform includes a number of tried-and-true underlying technologies from Riverbed, including the Riverbed Unified Agent for the deployment and management of SaaS-delivered visibility modules, Riverbed’s Aternity offering for end user experience monitoring and NPM+ for network and cloud monitoring, Riverbed Data Store, which consumes, analyzes, and reports on petabytes of data and Topology Viewer, which offers up dynamic mapping of connected devices to help put data into context.