AI Thought Leadership

AI-Era Networking: Why Deep, Real-Time Visibility Is Now Non-Negotiable

Market trends reshaping branch & campus networks

SaaS, Cloud, IoT/OT, and edge applications have turned yesterday’s hub-and-spoke networks into many-to-many fabrics where traffic-bursts, branch to branch application flows, and local internet breakout for application access dominate. Seconds-long latency and unexpected traffic spikes can impact user experiences while a five-minute polling typically used by network analytics and observability simply misses them. IT Teams are moving toward streaming telemetry and near-real-time flow visibility to close the gap. 

Why visibility is crucial for better business agility

To deliver great user experiences, IT teams need real-time, granular signals across the stack alongside second-by-second streaming telemetry to catch congestion, loss, and QoS queue packet drops. Additionally, they need near-real-time flow records showing who talked to whom and when and which application at a per application level like MOS for voice/video, transaction failures for transactional applications so you steer on actual quality instead of generic network SLAs and end-to-end visibility from user to app across LAN, WAN, and SSE to quickly tell whether the issue is a switch port, a WAN path, or the SaaS edge. 

What’s broken in most networking solutions

Most solutions are limited in providing the deep observability and actionable analytics due to the following reasons 

1. Relying on traditional SNMP and periodic polling techniques that miss the moment application degradation occurs
2. Most observability tools and appliances still lack consistent telemetry collection, analysis and reporting in real-time and correlating them effectively to provide user experience scoring.
3. etwork SLA only SD-WAN is blind to Quality of Experience (QoE) by depending on latency/jitter/loss while bypassing SaaS/app-level SLAs; as a result, it is reactive and can’t deliver Teams/Zoom/Webex performance when it matters.
4. On the LAN edge, visibility is fragmented with traditional switching leaves gaps around unmanaged/IoT devices, lateral movement, and per-user context, driving swivel-chair troubleshooting and slow MTTR.

The right solution should offer deep observability with actionable insights

Taking these challenges into considerations, the right solution should deliver more than visibility by enabling 

1. Real-time observability into network and application performance by measuring SLAs and user experience metrics using both application traffic and synthetic traffic from user to application
2. Take actions based on performance metrics in real-time proactively instead of reactively with the power of Large Language Models (LLMs) to ensure users do not experience any degradation. It should dynamically enable load-balancing, failover and optimization techniques like Forward Error Correction (FEC) and packet duplication on any WAN links
3. Natively deliver Digital Experience Management (DEM) that leverages Machine Learning (ML) to predict conditions like bandwidth bottlenecks, user experience score degrades and MOS score impacts for IT teams to tweak application policies before an outage or brownouts occur

Versa delivers visibility from switch port to SaaS session

For WAN/real-time apps with Versa Secure SD-WAN, you get MOS-based routing for 120+ codecs (Teams, Zoom, Webex) with automatic path changes when quality dips, plus continuous path and SaaS monitoring with QoS that prioritizes real-time flows backed by fast failover, FEC, and packet duplication to ride through brownouts. On the LAN, Versa Secure SD-LAN delivers complete device visibility including unmanaged/IoT/OT with automated identification and Zero-Trust micro-segmentation, along with AI-powered analytics and DEM for user-to-app insight, flow-level reporting (IPFIX/NetFlow), and lateral-movement tracking—all centrally managed with ZTP and templates at scale. 

What makes Versa Secure SD-WAN a better choice?

Bandwidth and SLA-based traffic steering:

Versa Secure SD-WAN pairs DPI with AI-driven app recognition and Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) to maintain performance proactively not reactively. Machine-learning models continuously analyze bandwidth, latency, jitter, round-trip delay, delay variation, transmit utilization, and forward/reverse loss (including packet-loss percentage) in real time, forecasting brownouts and triggering closed-loop, SLA-based path selection before users feel it. The result is intent-aware, QoE-first routing that continuously adapts to live conditions for every application flow. 

SaaS application traffic steering:

As voice, video, and conferencing shift to SaaS, Versa Secure SD-WAN applies AI-driven Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) and machine-learning path analytics to optimize quality in real time. It fingerprints SaaS flows and continuously correlates application QoE with live link KPIs (latency, jitter, loss, round-trip time, and utilization), predicting brownouts and triggering closed-loop traffic steering per-app local breakout, dynamic path reselection, and resiliency aids like FEC/packet duplication when needed. Whether SaaS is accessed directly or through intermediaries, Versa monitors actual user traffic alongside synthetics to keep sessions clear, stable, and responsive. 

MOS score-based traffic steering:

The Mean Opinion Score (MOS) is the benchmark for voice/video quality, and Versa OS™ uses AI-driven MOS estimation per stream across 120+ codecs and apps like Teams, Zoom, and Webex by correlating latency, jitter, loss, and codec/jitter-buffer behavior. When the models predict MOS will dip below your policy threshold, Versa Secure SD-WAN triggers closed-loop actions preemptive path reselection, QoS prioritization, and, when needed, FEC or packet duplication—to keep calls and streams crystal clear. 

Prioritization designed for real-time apps:

Beyond simple bandwidth/SLA steering, Versa Secure SD-WAN uses AI-driven telemetry and DEM/MOS signals to predict congestion and loss, then automatically reprograms QoS in real time. ML models adjust priority queues, shaping rates, and scheduling weights, tune WRED/drop thresholds, and DSCP remark flows so business-critical and latency-sensitive apps get priority even on bandwidth constrained links. The result is QoS that minimizes jitter and drops, dynamically balances upload/download and internal/external traffic, and keeps key apps like voice, video, and transactional SaaS performing smoothly during brownouts. 

AI-Powered Network Intelligence:

Versa Secure SD-LAN leverages AI/ML to analyze vast amounts of network data, identifying and pinpointing the root cause of issues to expedite troubleshooting and the resolution of trouble tickets. Customers can now proactively analyze problems and make predictive decisions using historical and real-time trends, rather than waiting for a widespread outage or attack to occur.  

Monitor lateral movement of devices:

Detects devices inline and in real-time to identify, categorize and secure devices, including unmanaged and IoT devices. Versa Secure SD-LAN tracks the movement of the device and provides visibility to help the IT team take proactive measures to secure the network or detect application performance issues. 

Flow-Level Reporting: 

Delivers complete visibility into traffic patterns and application sessions using IPFIX and NetFlow to help businesses understand the traffic decision-making process within the LAN topologies. This combined with real-time insights into traffic behavior, ensures the quick identification of bandwidth bottlenecks and performance issues. 

Digital Experience Management: 

Versa offers DEM to provide visibility from the end user to the application and everything in between, helping IT teams pinpoint exactly where the issue originated. With DEM natively integrated into SD-LAN, SD-WAN and SSE, users can now monitor every edge for issues and performance degradation to quickly root cause and resolve the issues. For example, if an outage originates from a misconfiguration of a VLAN on a switch, Versa Secure SD-LAN, along with DEM, can provide visibility to enable proactive resolution and avoid future outages.

Summary 

Versa Secure SD-WAN adds fast failover, forward error correction, packet duplication, dynamic path selection, and SLA-based routing to ensure industry-leading reliability and voice/video quality —even in challenging network conditions so you can confidently modernize the branch and elevate user experience for critical apps. Complementing this, Versa Secure SD-LAN delivers Zero-Trust security at the LAN edge with integrated NGFW, threat protection, and IPS/IDS —blocking threats where they enter while maintaining performance and consistent protection. Versa Analytics provides intelligent, real-time, user-aware insights to optimize performance, strengthen security posture, and drive data-backed operations.