AI Advisor

This article discusses the AI Advisor features of the Kentik portal.

IMPORTANT:

• Kentik AI must be enabled to use AI Advisor (see Kentik AI).

• AI Advisor is read-only. Kentik does not request, nor want, write access to your infrastructure (see Security & Privacy Commitments).

About AI Advisor

Kentik’s AI Advisor is an advanced AI agent designed to act as your Network Intelligence partner. It guides triage, troubleshoots, and suggests remediation for network operations issues by combining rich data with natural language interaction:

• Interpretation: Takes your text-based question/prompt, determines the intent (e.g., check interface status, troubleshoot an alert), and, when applicable, makes a plan and includes its reasoning in the conversation.

• Tool Execution: Selects and executes the necessary internal/external data exploration and diagnostic tools (e.g., querying interface inventory, fetching device metrics, running a flow analysis, see Supported Tools). All progress, including steps taken and data gathered including visualizations, is shown in the conversation in real time.

Customize AI Advisor

Make AI Advisor even more powerful by tailoring it to your organization’s needs with Runbooks and Custom Network Context.

Runbooks

Runbooks are predefined, Markdown-formatted text recipes to guide AI Advisor through the diagnostic steps for specific alerts. They can:

• Be assigned to one or more alert policies

• Help to start alert investigations with all relevant information already in place

• Help to minimize human error by ensuring a pre-defined, systematic troubleshooting approach for specific situations

Custom Network Context

Add Markdown-formatted text (up to 100K characters) of any additional information you choose to provide about your network environment. Here are some considerations:

• AI Advisor will use this custom network context in all conversations in your organization.

• Examples include:

  • Network design and architecture (campus, WAN, data center, cloud)

  • IP addressing schemas

  • Naming conventions for devices, interfaces, and sites

  • Device types and vendors

  • Maintenance window schedules

  • What the word “customer” means in your context

  • Critical applications and traffic patterns

  • Any specific operational procedures or constraints

Note: Runbooks and Custom Network Context can be configured by a Super Administrator user in Organization Settings » Kentik AI (see Kentik AI Settings).

UI Modes

AI Advisor is available in the Kentik portal in several UI modes: Full-Page Mode, Overlay Mode, and Overlay Mode (Additional Context), as described below.

Full-Page Mode

• Select AI Advisor from the portal’s main nav menu.

• Conversation occupies the entire page for maximum readability.

Overlay Mode

• The Ask button on most portal pages opens a resizable conversation window.

• Navigate the portal normally while the conversation remains open.

• Same agent and same UI features as full-page mode.

• Click the “full screen” icon to move the conversation to full-page mode.

TIP: In overlay mode on certain portal pages, e.g., Devices and Alerting, AI Advisor can automatically start troubleshooting based on what alert/device you are viewing; see Overlay Mode (Additional Context).

Overlay Mode (Additional Context)

When you open AI Advisor on the following Kentik portal pages, it can automatically use the prompt “Troubleshoot this alert for me” and start investigating based on the device/alert you are viewing. A blue lozenge in the chat indicates the name of the alert that AI Advisor is using as context for its investigation.

Get Started

Switching on AI Advisor in the Kentik portal is easy — just enable it in the settings and start using it:

1. Enable Kentik AI for your entire organization via the Kentik AI Settings page.

   Note: Must be done by a Super Administrator user (see Kentik AI Settings for a step-by-step procedure).

2. Refresh any open browser tabs with the Kentik portal.

3. Start a Conversation with AI Advisor in the Kentik portal using one of the following:

   • Select AI Advisor in the main nav menu.

   • Click the Ask button in the header of most pages.

   • Click Investigate with AI Advisor in certain pages; see Overlay Mode (Additional Context).

Example Uses

Here are examples of the deeper, agentic actions that Kentik’s AI Advisor can perform:

Note: Kentik feeds NMS device configurations into AI Advisor, allowing you to analyze configuration changes alongside flow data, metrics, and network topology (see SSH Command Access for Kentik NMS).

Rapid Network Troubleshooting

AI Advisor accelerates incident response by allowing you to ask natural language questions about network issues instead of manually querying multiple dashboards and tools.

Example Scenario:

• An engineer notices degraded application performance and asks: "Show me interfaces with high packet loss in the last hour"

• AI Advisor queries the NMS metrics, identifies problematic interfaces, and presents the data in an easy-to-read format

• Follow-up questions like "What BGP neighbors are affected?" or "Analyze the traffic spike on interface ae0.3" provide deeper context

This conversational approach reduces mean time to resolution (MTTR) by eliminating the need to navigate multiple screens and construct complex queries.

Cloud Network Visibility and Optimization

AI Advisor helps teams understand and optimize their multi-cloud network architecture by providing instant insights into AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.

Example Scenario:

• A cloud architect asks: "Show me all VPCs in my AWS account and their connectivity"

• AI Advisor retrieves the cloud inventory and visualizes the topology

• Follow-up questions like "What's the traffic between my AWS and Azure environments?" or "Find security group misconfigurations blocking traffic to subnet-abc123" help identify optimization opportunities

AI Advisor can trace network paths, identify cost-saving opportunities (like peering candidates), and surface security risks—all through simple conversational queries.

Did You Know? Multi-Lingual Support

AI Advisor uses a powerful language model that supports conversations in multiple languages, including Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and others. Feel free to ask your questions and receive answers in your preferred language.

Using AI Advisor

This section covers how to use AI Advisor, along with guidelines and best practices.

Start a Conversation

Start new conversations with AI Advisor in the following portal locations using these steps:

1. Launch AI Advisor: In the Kentik portal, either:

   1. Select AI Advisor from the main nav menu to open it in Full-Page Mode.

   2. Click Ask in the header of most pages to open it in Overlay Mode.

   3. On certain portal pages, click Investigate with AI Advisor to start a context-aware troubleshooting session (see Overlay Mode (Additional Context).

   4. While already in a conversation, click + New.

2. Ask: Type in your question/request into the chat field (see Best Practices), then press Enter to start your interactive conversation.

   1. In Overlay Mode, optionally click a suggested prompt to start the conversation.

3. Watch: AI Advisor starts generating a response, providing updates on steps being taken.

4. Reasoning Panes: When applicable, AI Advisor shows its plan-making reasoning in a collapsible pane at the top of each message. Use the Hide reasoning/Show reasoning buttons to open and close the pane.

5. Completed Task Panes: Finished tasks are shown in panes with green check marks. The View Details button opens a sidebar with detailed task results, e.g., a visualization from Kentik’s Data Explorer, or search results from the Kentik Knowledge Base.

   TIP: See Best Practices and Guidelines from this article for more tips on working with AI Advisor.

Manage Conversation History

To view and manage conversation history, open AI Advisor in either overlay or full-page mode and follow these steps.

1. Click History (or View history in overlay mode) to open the conversation history.

2. From the Recent or Company conversation lists, select a conversation to view (or continue) it in the main AI Advisor pane.

3. Enter keywords in the Search… field, then click the conversation to open it in the main AI Advisor pane.

4. For your conversations (Recent list), click the vertical dots icon for a conversation and select from the following options:

   1. Pin/Unpin: Click Pin to keep the conversation at the top of the Recent list, and Unpin to remove from the top.

   2. Rename: Edit the Kentik-assigned conversation name to your preferred name.

   3. Delete: Remove the conversation from your AI Advisor history.

   Note: Company conversations are read-only and can only be managed by the users who created them.

Guidelines

Using AI can be confusing, so here are some guidelines for what you can expect AI Advisor to do (and not do):

Note: See Kentik’s Security & Privacy Commitments for more, and reach out to Customer Care with any lingering questions.

Best Practices

Since AI Advisor is an agent, it thrives on clear instructions, context, and iterative feedback. Here are some tips for interacting with this highly capable, yet literal, digital colleague.

1. Be Specific, Not Just Descriptive

Whenever possible, tell AI Advisor exactly what to do and what format you need.

2. Check and Redirect to Refine Execution

Use AI Advisor's reasoning panes (available within most conversations) to debug the workflow and improve your next prompt.

3. Provide Context to Avoid Hallucination

Any AI Agent’s biggest risk is confident fabrication (hallucination). Whenever possible, provide the necessary context to anchor its response in reality.

• Anchor to Data: When asking for a definition or general concept, try to follow up with a local data question: "What is BGP session flapping? Now, check if we had any BGP session flaps on our core devices in the last 72 hours."

• Define Unknowns: If you use a custom term (like a non-standard device tag), define it in the prompt: "Find flow data for the 'Customer_Gold' group (this group is defined by ASN 64511 and BGP Community 1234:56). Which country generated the most traffic to them in the last hour?"

Supported Tools

The Kentik-managed “tools” that AI Advisor can use includes, but is not limited to the following: