Duxbury Networking has expanded its Extreme Networks offering with Extreme Agent ONE Coworker, a context-aware AI capability designed to help network teams investigate faults, understand performance problems, and identify issues before they affect users.
Extreme Networks announced the general availability of Agent ONE Coworker on 9 September, making it available to Extreme Platform ONE customers worldwide as part of their existing subscriptions.
The technology uses information from each customer’s network, including real-time telemetry, historical performance, and relationships between devices and applications, to provide recommendations relevant to the environment being managed.
“Network engineers already have access to a great deal of information. The challenge is often finding the information that explains a particular problem,” says Riaan van Staden, Technical Officer at Duxbury Networking. “What interests us about Agent ONE is that it understands the network it is working with. The engineer can start with findings based on the customer’s actual environment rather than having to piece everything together manually.”
Working with the network’s own data
Agent ONE Coworker operates within Extreme Platform ONE, drawing on operational information collected across the network. Extreme uses a connectivity-aware knowledge graph to establish relationships between network components and support AI-generated recommendations based on that information.
The system also presents the reasoning behind its recommendations, allowing engineers to review the findings before deciding how to proceed.
For example, an administrator investigating wireless roaming complaints can use Agent ONE’s Talk to Data capability to ask which clients are experiencing problems. The system can draw on the available network telemetry to help identify affected devices and narrow the investigation.
It also provides access to technical documentation and troubleshooting guidance through Talk to Knowledge, bringing information into the workflow where the engineer is already working.
Finding problems before the support call
One of the more significant developments is Agent ONE Coworker’s Nudge capability, which examines current network conditions alongside historical performance patterns and identifies changes that may require attention.
An engineer may therefore receive information about developing congestion or unusual network behaviour before somebody reports a problem. The recommendation can include findings from the system’s analysis, giving the team a starting point for further investigation.
Agent ONE also connects network troubleshooting with Extreme’s support operation. Its Talk to Support capability can gather relevant information from the environment, recommend possible fixes and escalate cases to Extreme’s Global Technical Assistance Center with supporting context already attached.
Extreme says Agent ONE Coworker can help IT teams resolve network issues up to 15 times faster. The figure is the vendor’s stated performance claim, with the benefit depending on the type of issue and the network environment.
Van Staden believes the more immediate value for customers is the time engineers can save when investigating problems.
“A lot of troubleshooting time is spent establishing what happened and gathering enough information to understand the fault. If the platform has already correlated that information and can show the engineer why it reached a particular conclusion, the investigation can move forward much sooner. The engineer still needs to assess the recommendation and decide what is appropriate for that network,” he says.
Bringing Agent ONE into the local channel
For Duxbury’s reseller partners, the general availability of Agent ONE Coworker creates an opportunity to revisit how customers are managing their Extreme networks and where AI-assisted operations could make a practical difference.
The capability is included within Extreme Platform ONE, which brings network management and operational information into a common environment. Partners will need to consider how customers are using Platform ONE and what network information is available to support Agent ONE’s analysis.
Duxbury will work with resellers to assess where the technology fits within existing customer environments and how its capabilities can support everyday network operations. This includes helping partners understand the available workflows and the role of AI-assisted investigation within established technical support processes.
“Customers will want to see what this can do in their own networks. Our role is to help partners understand the technology and identify where it can save engineers time. The real test will be how useful those recommendations are when somebody is dealing with an actual network problem,” says van Staden. For more information on Extreme Agent ONE Coworker and the Extreme Networks portfolio, visit www.duxbury.co.za/extreme-networks/
