\"Is this a synth issue or a network issue?\"<\/em> he asked\u2014the classic question that marks the beginning of every high-stakes triage.<\/p><\/blockquote> Across the virtual table, Ally, the network architect, was digging into the charts. \"Why so many that say Tokyo?\" she muttered, staring at a sea of overlapping lines. The team was drowning in raw data, but they were missing the story.<\/p> To solve these high-pressure moments, we\u2019re thrilled to announce the enhanced Investigative Capabilities of AI Advisor (AIA)<\/strong>. AI Advisor now has the power to act as your primary on-call investigator, correlating Synthetics monitoring<\/strong> with real-time BGP telemetry<\/strong>. Instead of you manually hunting for common denominators across different ephemeral queries or consoles, AIA looks at your global agent network, analyzes the routing paths, and builds a definitive root-cause report and complete with path visualizations, directly in the chat.<\/p> This update turns AIA into a collaborative partner that solves the \"unknown network change\" by following the evidence:<\/p> *note this image is an anonymized recreation based on the original<\/em><\/p> Get Started! Ready to find your Mean Time to Innocence? Head to the Synthetics<\/strong> section in the Kentik portal to explore the new trace tool, or ask AI Advisor<\/strong> to \"analyze the latest packet loss spike\" to see the triangulation diagram in action. For a deep dive into the technical specs, visit our Knowledge Base<\/a>.<\/p>","url":"https:\/\/new.kentik.com\/from-is-it-just-me-to-mean-time-to-innocence-an-ai-advisor-triage-story-2ngfgQ","title":"From \"Is it just me?\" to Mean Time to Innocence: An AI Advisor Triage Story","summary":"\"Portal won't even load for me,\" said the SRE manager, Jim-bob, frantically looking at a series of alerts cascading through his observabilit...","date_modified":"2026-05-06T00:43:17.913Z","tags":["Synthetics"]},{"id":"439081","content_html":" On May 8, 2026<\/strong>, during a scheduled maintenance window at 2AM UTC<\/strong>, Kentik will introduce an F5 Distributed Cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)<\/a> in front of our US SaaS platform (portal.kentik.com<\/a> \/ api.kentik.com<\/a>). \u00a0This is part of our commitment to continual improvement and defense in depth strategy to secure our systems in the face of novel, AI-assisted attack chains. (Note<\/strong> - As part of our initial deployment, this change took effect in EU SaaS on April 22, 2026)<\/em><\/p> All HTTPS traffic to portal.kentik.com<\/a>, \u00a0api.kentik.com<\/a> (including *.my.kentik.com, beta.kentik.com & next.kentik.com)<\/em>, and the corresponding .eu<\/em> domains, now routes through the F5 WAF at 159.60.158.89<\/strong> before reaching Kentik infrastructure. This provides enhanced protection against malicious web application traffic and attacks with no change to the portal or API functionality.<\/p> Action only required if you have outbound IP allowlists. If your proxies, firewalls or other routing policies restrict outbound HTTPS (port 443) to Kentik by IP, you must add 159.60.158.89<\/strong> alongside the existing Kentik VIPs. Without this, portal and API access may be blocked from your network.<\/p> F5 Data Processing<\/strong><\/p> Private Network Interconnect (PNI)<\/strong><\/p> If you have any questions regarding this, please reach out to Kentik support or your customer success advisor.<\/p>","url":"https:\/\/new.kentik.com\/web-application-firewall-waf-protection-for-kentik-saas-portal-and-api-Llru8","title":"Web Application Firewall (WAF) protection for Kentik SaaS Portal and API","summary":"On May 8, 2026, during a scheduled maintenance window at 2AM UTC, Kentik will introduce an F5 Distributed Cloud Web Application Firewall (WA...","date_modified":"2026-05-04T19:06:13.098Z","tags":[]},{"id":"438954","content_html":" Network problems happen all the time, but the hardest part isn't detection. It's getting to the why<\/em><\/strong>. Detection is easy, but diagnosis is not. Observability has gotten incredibly good at detecting issues and narrowing down the problem space. But actually diagnosing the network and finding the root cause? That is still painfully manual.<\/p> Engineers often need to look at multiple tools, dashboards and CLIs to get to root cause. Introducing, Kentik's new AI diagnostics for faster root-cause analsys! By bringing diagnostic tools-of-the-trade directly into your telemetry and alerting workflows, you can stop the swivel-chair investigation and confirm root causes faster.<\/p> Here are three new capabilities launching today to help you streamline troubleshooting:<\/p> Need to confirm an issue from a specific vantage point? You can now use AI Advisor to validate reachability and path behavior from Universal Agents. This allows you to test and confirm network issues exactly where they matter most to your end-users.<\/p> Configuration changes are a leading cause of network incidents. Kentik NMS now periodically captures running configs over SSH, securely stores them as secret-redacted backups, and surfaces diffs between revisions. Even better: AI Advisor can instantly analyze these backups and diffs to answer questions about configuration states and identify if a recent change is the culprit behind your current issue.<\/p> When an investigation requires live device data, the usual answer is to pull up a CLI and start digging. Now, you can do it right from AI Advisor. AI Advisor can propose, run, and analyze read-only Monitor your devices with NMS, configure SSH access and start solving problems faster today. There's no \"upcharge\" for this new feature. It's included with an NMS device license. Need more details? Check out our knowledge base article<\/a> and release blog<\/a>.<\/p> Observation Deck was initially built as a flexible landing page that adapts to users' interest. It includes a library of widgets that aren't available as Data\/Metrics Explorer views, but also allows our users to embed views from these two key Infrastructure Analytics query applications. In its initial design, there was only one Observation Deck per user, and no ability for a group of users to share the same.<\/p> Discussions with our user base led to these requirements:<\/p> So... that's what this update is about! Read on! At the end of the article, we'll also share our vision of how Observation Decks and Dashboards will evolve in the short\/mid\/long term future, so make sure you review the last section.<\/p> If you go to the Library ( This means that you can now create multiple Observation Decks. Here's a few things about how it works:<\/p> With this update, you'll find the previous ability to add widgets from a selection of existing ones with in the We have now made editing Observation Deck simpler - let's go through a few useful changes that we've added:<\/p> Edit in place<\/strong><\/p> All Observation Deck panel titles, as well as the main title are now editable in place: hovering on these titles highlights them, clicking loads an inline edit field.<\/p> New top level widget types<\/strong><\/p> New widgets have been released that have long been asked by our users:<\/p> The Section Widget lets you create sections to group panels in and make long Observation Decks easier for the users to consume - see below:<\/p> Conveniently, sections are also collapsible\/expandable, as shown below:<\/p> Markdown Text panels are another addition making this Observation Deck update exciting, look for yourself in the screenshot below.<\/p> A couple tricks that we've found very useful when using markdown panels:<\/p> To further Observation Deck's usefulness and make them more manageable at scale in the case of user groups with different demands in Kentik Portal, we've extended management capabilities throughout the Settings experience.<\/p> If your user permissions allows it, you can now assign Landing Pages to users yourself (it used to be a user private setting).<\/p> In the Company Settings > Users > Edit User workflow, you'll now be able to set a specific Observation Deck as a landing page for any user:<\/p> Beyond that, you'll also be able to leverage Bulk Edit capabilities from the same Users management page to assign the same Observation Deck to multiple users at the same time in one fell swoop!<\/p> Some of our users use SSO RBAC Automated Attribute Mapping via Role Sets (see the announcement here<\/a>): this feature allows Kentik Administrator to set RBAC permissions and enforce them at login based on users' SAML2 attributes, including User Groups. Some users prefer relying on programmatic capabilities to set up users using our API - for those we've also extended the User API endpoints to include setting an Observation Deck as a landing page programmatically<\/p> As a lot of you have already pointed out, Observation Decks and Dashboards are very similar. For example, a lot of our users have asked for an ability to add Observation Deck widgets to Dashboards.<\/p> Additionally, we have determined that Dashboards have a high barrier to entry for our newer users, and are too involved to Create or Edit.<\/p> For both these reasons, we will merge Observation Decks and Dashboards together in the near future. Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of what you can expect:<\/p> Last but not least, we have a long term project to sprinkle AI magic over these new dashboards getting dashboard creation a step closer to true Generative AI!<\/p> Tell us what you'd like to see in these future dashboards, it's never to late to get involved in the future of Kentik Portal and we love sourcing our future improvements from our users themselves!<\/p>","url":"https:\/\/new.kentik.com\/observation-deck-upgrade-and-the-future-of-dashboards-2zK2TC","title":"Observation Deck upgrade, and the future of Dashboards","summary":"Observation Deck was initially built as a flexible landing page that adapts to users' interest. It includes a library of widgets that aren't...","date_modified":"2026-04-30T15:00:00.000Z","tags":["Improvement","Core","UI\/UX"]},{"id":"438762","content_html":" Managing cloud security shouldn't be a guessing game, especially when you need to know exactly why traffic is being blocked or allowed across your AWS environment. We understand how frustrating and time-consuming it can be to troubleshoot these visibility gaps. And that's why we are thrilled to announce that Kentik Cloud now supports the ingestion of AWS Network Firewall (ANF) logs<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p> By integrating this service-based firewall data, Kentik provides you with deep observability into traffic moving into, out of, and across your AWS environment, including critical metadata not found in standard VPC flow logs. This integration empowers your team for proactive network security management by bringing enriched ANF flow logs, alert logs, and firewall metrics all into a single view with the most relevant network context from your AWS environment.<\/p> Network firewalls are a critical part of your cloud network architecture, so it was important that we first provide the relevant context about those ANF connections in the Kentik Map. This also provides important metadata about the Firewall Attachments, Firewall Rule Groups, and all of the connections from VPCs, subnets, Transit Gateways, and more.\u00a0<\/p> For troubleshooting, it was also important that this firewall metadata was also used for path analysis across your AWS network. We added AWS Network Firewall details to Kentik Cloud Pathfinder, including direct links into the AWS Console for firewall rule configuration.<\/p> Finally, we wanted to surface the enriched ANF flow and alert log data to ensure that traffic analysis had a first-class experience in\u00a0<\/span>Kentik Data Explorer. Now you can use ANF-provided log dimensions along with Kentik's enrichment engine to make it easy to look at specific dropped flows and which VPC, region, and application they come from.\u00a0<\/p> Ready to get more out of your AWS Network Firewall visibility? Log in to the Kentik Portal today to enable AWS Network Firewall log ingestion as part of your Kentik Cloud Export. For step-by-step configuration details, check out our Knowledge Base article on integrating AWS Network Firewall logs<\/a>.<\/p> KProxy has long been a trusted ally in maintaining network visibility across complex and restricted environments. As we look toward the future of network intelligence, we are excited to help you scale even further by integrating these proven capabilities into a more unified and automated platform experience.<\/p> With last week\u2019s release of Flow Proxy<\/strong> as a native capability within the Kentik Universal Agent<\/strong>, we are now officially setting a sunset date for the standalone KProxy binary: May 1, 2027<\/strong>.<\/p> We\u2019re sharing this roadmap a full year in advance to ensure your team has a clear and supported path to the next generation of flow collection. This transition moves the robust traffic forwarding you've relied on into a \"set-it-and-forget-it\" capability model. By consolidating into the Universal Agent, you\u2019re moving toward a more streamlined, single-agent architecture that simplifies your entire telemetry stack.<\/p> Transitioning to Flow Proxy allows you to leverage a modern, high-performance architecture while building on the reliable foundation KProxy established.<\/p> The future of network intelligence is unified, and the path forward is simple. We recommend all users begin migrating their KProxy instances to the Universal Agent Flow Proxy capability to start taking advantage of these integrated features today.<\/p> Dive into the KProxy Migration Guide<\/strong><\/a> to map out your move, or jump into the Kentik Portal<\/strong><\/a> to enable Flow Proxy on your existing Universal Agents. Let\u2019s get your network ready for 2027.<\/p>","url":"https:\/\/new.kentik.com\/sunset-for-standalone-kproxy-transitioning-to-flow-proxy-and-2027-34oIWA","title":"Sunset for Standalone KProxy: Transitioning to Flow Proxy and 2027","summary":"KProxy has long been a trusted ally in maintaining network visibility across complex and restricted environments. As we look toward the futu...","date_modified":"2026-04-28T05:58:58.687Z","tags":["Agents & Binaries","Flow"]},{"id":"433452","content_html":" Onboarding network devices shouldn't require a complex flowchart to determine which agent polls for what data. We understand that juggling \"NMS devices\" versus \"Flow devices\"\u2014and facing the performance penalty of \"double polling\" where multiple agents hit the same device\u2014has been a source of friction and unnecessary complexity.\u00a0<\/p> We\u2019re thrilled to announce a major evolution in how the Kentik Universal Agent (UA) collects device telemetry. Instead of a product-focused \"NMS\" capability, all SNMP and Streaming Telemetry (ST) collection will be handed by a Unified SNMP\/ST capability.<\/strong><\/p> Previously, the Universal Agent\u2019s \"NMS\" capability focused on full monitoring (as well as ICMP-only devices), while a separate Kproxy agent (outside of the UA) handled SNMP polling for flow enrichment (as well as flow ingest). This often led to redundant polling and confusing configurations when polling devices for both flow enrichment and device monitoring.<\/p> The \"NMS\" capability has evolved into the SNMP\/ST capability<\/strong>. This single, powerful capability now handles both<\/strong> Full Monitoring (NMS) and Flow Enrichment. For more details on these distinctions, check out the Detailed Migration Scenarios<\/a> section of the KProxy Migration Guide<\/a>. This update works hand-in-hand with our new\u00a0UA Flow Proxy capability<\/a>, allowing you to consolidate everything under the Universal Agent framework, eliminating the need for standalone Kproxy installations and streamlining your \"Kentik devices\" onboarding process.<\/p> This unification isn't just a rename; it is a fundamental architectural improvement designed to reduce overhead and simplify your workflow.<\/p> Ready to streamline your device telemetry? For a detailed breakdown of the migration paths and new configuration options\u2014including Flow Enrichment vs. Full Monitoring\u2014check out the KProxy Migration Guide<\/a> in the Kentik Knowledge Base.<\/p>","url":"https:\/\/new.kentik.com\/unify-your-collection-pipeline-with-the-new-snmp-st-capability-OEzYc","title":"Unify Your Collection Pipeline with the New SNMP\/ST Capability","summary":" Onboarding network devices shouldn't require a complex flowchart to determine which agent polls for what data. We understand that juggling ...","date_modified":"2026-04-22T04:25:54.000Z","tags":["Improvement","UI\/UX","Agents & Binaries","Flow","SNMP","NMS"]},{"id":"432780","content_html":" Managing disparate agent binaries across your network shouldn't be a manual chore that slows down or complicates your visibility. We know that deploying agents in remote sites or restricted environments often feels like a balancing act between security requirements and operational simplicity.<\/p> We\u2019re thrilled to announce that the power of KProxy is now natively integrated into the Kentik Universal Agent!<\/strong> This update brings the trusted secure traffic forwarding agent you rely on directly into our Universal Agent<\/a>. Instead of managing standalone KProxy installations via command line, you can now deploy, manage, and scale your flow collection as a simple \"capability\" within the Universal Agent. This integration allows the agent to receive, process, and forward NetFlow, sFlow, and IPFIX telemetry to the Kentik platform with more control and less friction than ever before.<\/p> This evolution of the Flow Proxy capability isn't just about consolidation; it's about making your life easier and your network more secure.<\/p> Ready to streamline your device telemetry? For a detailed breakdown of the migration paths and new Flow Proxy configuration options check out the\u00a0<\/span>KProxy Migration Guide<\/a>\u00a0in the Kentik Knowledge Base.<\/span><\/p> Data Explorer has always been the crown jewel of Kentik Portal: by any measure this Observability Analytics workbench is our users' most beloved application. As its grown over time, we've kept adding new functionality to it over the years. As we were ramping up Kentik's AI capabilities, we discovered very early that AI Advisor does an excellent job as a Natural Language Processor that turns human prompts into fully fledged Data Explorer queries - AI Advisor Announcement here<\/em><\/a><\/p> So to facilitate faster queries in Data Explorer, we've added small, buy highly useful feature to AI Advisor when using AI Advisor on the Data Explorer page:\u00a0Send to Data Explorer.<\/strong><\/p> When it comes to users new to Data Explorer, we believe there's nothing more efficient than learning its ropes by example. When clicked, the Send to Data Explorer\u00a0<\/strong>button will replace the current query in the main window with an updated one from this step of the prompt response. Here's a sample follow-up to the previous prompt, which will present the results in a table, but also offer the Send to Data Explorer<\/strong> button<\/p> ... and the result in the main Data Explorer window when clicking the button<\/p>What's New?<\/h2>
Why It Matters<\/h2>
*note this image is an anonymized recreation based on the original<\/em><\/p>
<\/p>
What's changing<\/strong><\/h2>
What's not changing<\/strong><\/h2>
(Note:<\/strong> However, some kproxy management\/health calls, ksynth result uploads and, any customer scripts calling our API \u00a0\u2014 now routes through the WAF)<\/em><\/li><\/ul>Action required<\/strong><\/h2>
Data Processing Notes<\/h2>
Additional F5 information<\/h2>
On-Demand Connectivity Tests<\/strong><\/h2>
<\/p>
\ud83d\udcdd Config Context (Backups + Diffs)<\/strong><\/h2>
<\/p>
<\/p>
<\/p>
\ud83d\udcbb SSH Command Access<\/strong> <\/h2>show<\/code> commands directly inside your investigation thread.<\/p><\/p>
Ready to see it in action?<\/strong><\/h1>
<\/p>","url":"https:\/\/new.kentik.com\/accelerate-network-diagnostics-with-command-access-config-diffs-and-on-demand-tests-37Obyo","title":"Accelerate Network Diagnostics with Command Access, Config Diffs and On-Demand Tests","summary":"Network problems happen all the time, but the hardest part isn't detection. It's getting to the why. Detection is easy, but diagnosis is not...","date_modified":"2026-05-04T15:00:00.000Z","tags":["UI\/UX","Synthetics","New feature","NMS","AI"]},{"id":"438668","content_html":"Introducing the new observation decks<\/h2>
Observation Decks are now their own Library objects<\/h3>
[shift]+[s]<\/code> from any screen in Kentik Portal, one of those magic shortcuts you want to know about) you will notice that the left-side filter panel now offers an additional choice for Type<\/code>:<\/p><\/p>
<\/p>
Private<\/code> meaning you only will see them if you had one<\/li>Observation Deck<\/code>, each with a different owner<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/p>
A complete overhaul of Observation Deck editing capabilities<\/h2>
+ Add Panel<\/code> dropdown at the top:<\/p><\/p>
<\/p>
<\/p>
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<\/p>Central management of Observation Decks as Landing Page experiences<\/h2>
Per user assignment of Observation Deck as a Landing Page<\/h3>
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SSO Role-Sets and the associated Landing Page<\/h3>
In that context, a Role-Set is a collection of roles assigned by SSO at login, and it now contains a setting to assign a specific landing page: each who has been assigned a Role-Set containing a Landing Page setting will now default to the selected Landing Page, where a named Observation Deck can be configured, as shown below.<\/p><\/p>
User API extensions for Observation Decks as a Landing Page<\/h3>
<\/p>
What is the future of Dashboards and Observation Decks ?<\/h2>
What's new?<\/h2>
<\/p>
<\/p>
<\/p>
How do I get started?<\/h2>
<\/p>
<\/p>","url":"https:\/\/new.kentik.com\/gain-full-visibility-into-your-aws-network-firewall-traffic-4itdNS","title":"Gain Full Visibility into Your AWS Network Firewall Traffic","summary":"Managing cloud security shouldn't be a guessing game, especially when you need to know exactly why traffic is being blocked or allowed acros...","date_modified":"2026-04-28T19:31:03.626Z","tags":["Hybrid Cloud","Kentik Map"]},{"id":"438695","content_html":"See What\u2019s New<\/h3>
Why It Matters<\/h3>
Get Started!<\/h3>
<\/p>
What\u2019s New?<\/h3>
<\/h3>Why It Matters<\/h3>
<\/h3>
Get Started!<\/h3>
What\u2019s New?<\/h3>
<\/p><\/h3>
Why It Matters<\/h3>
<\/p>
Get Started!<\/h3>
<\/p>","url":"https:\/\/new.kentik.com\/streamline-your-flow-collection-with-the-new-universal-agent-flow-proxy-2zDILS","title":"Streamline Your Flow Collection with the New Universal Agent Flow Proxy","summary":"Managing disparate agent binaries across your network shouldn't be a manual chore that slows down or complicates your visibility. We know th...","date_modified":"2026-04-21T22:15:43.000Z","tags":["Improvement","Service Provider","UI\/UX","Agents & Binaries","Flow"]},{"id":"437490","content_html":"
As a byproduct, we've heard feedback from our newer users that this Data Explorer beast could be hard to tame as you're making your first steps in Kentik Portal.<\/p>Learning to use Data Explorer with AI Advisor<\/h2>
Starting today, you'll notice that when AI Advisor writes an answer to the chat window on a Data Explorer page that contains a query it has used for analysis, it will now present a Send to Data Explorer\u00a0<\/strong>button next to it.<\/p><\/p>
The beauty of it is that users can keep iterating over the same query without ever having to set all the query parameters themselves in the Data Explorer query panel. The additional benefit is that after each iteration, a learning user can precisely look at what parameters AI Advisor changed in the query to respond to their prompt, therefore getting a personalized tutorial on setting up their own query!<\/p><\/p>
<\/p>
But wait... enter Cause Analysis<\/h2>