{"slug": "cisco-exec-testifies-at-us-senate-panel-on-ais-network-impact", "title": "Cisco exec testifies at US Senate panel on AI’s network impact", "summary": "Cisco chief architect Bob Everson testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media on July 30, stating that AI is reshaping networks by increasing traffic volume and changing traffic patterns, with a fourfold increase in AI inference traffic over eight months and AI agents generating 450 percent more traffic than humans. Everson highlighted that enterprise customers report a 34% increase in traffic tied to AI workloads in the past year and expect a 96% increase next year, with 73% of organizations facing or expecting campus and branch capacity limitations within 24 months.", "body_md": "AI is profoundly changing enterprise and service provider networks, and operators must evolve to support AI workloads, according to a Cisco executive who [testified last week](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/meetings/379d9950-dc84-b1bf-2c6a-ee1ebb42fbe2/Everson_Testimony-7.30.26-Final_d1fc268a-ed9e-42a7-abbe-d52a960f49e1.pdf) at a US Senate subcommitee meeting.\n\n[Bob Everson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobeverson/), chief architect of provider mobility with Cisco, spoke before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media, which falls under the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Everson shared Cisco’s perspective on the status of AI and focused on two core questions: How is AI reshaping our networks, and how can networks leverage the power of AI?\n\nThe July 30 hearing, titled “Intelligent Networks: Powering Artificial Intelligence and Transforming Communications,” was planned to explore how the rapid adoption of AI has impacted network infrastructure.\n\n“We will explore how widespread AI use has forced networks to evolve, requiring more capacity and more complex designs so that AI can run efficiently on those networks,” said [U.S. Senator Deb Fischer](https://www.fischer.senate.gov/public/) (R-Neb), Chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media, in her [opening statement](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/press/rep/release/fischer-leads-hearing-on-ai-in-communications-networks/?utm_source=chatgpt.com). “We will consider how government, providers, and other industries are responding to that demand. Private companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in network deployment in recent years. Various federal broadband programs have also provided billions to support targeted network deployment and maintenance throughout the country.”\n\nOthers who testified came from organizations including U.S. Telecom, Vanderbilt University, and Nebraska Public Service Commission.\n\n“AI is changing not only the volume of network traffic, but the behavior. Cisco measured a fourfold increase in AI inference traffic over eight months. Networks have traditionally been optimized for content flowing downstream. AI is far more two-way and uplink-intensive: prompts, context, sensor data, and agent activity all travel back toward AI models, and the resulting connections are active longer than conventional web transactions,” said Everson. “AI agents amplify these effects by operating at software speed. In our testing, an agent generated 450 percent more traffic than a person performing the same task, and roughly 70 percent of that additional traffic was inference.”\n\n“In campus and branch networks—like the one that powers the Senate office building we are sitting in today—we have already seen customers report a 34% increase in traffic tied to AI workloads over the last 12 months, and they expect to see a 96% increase this coming year,” Everson said.\n\n“Half of enterprise customers report that AI demand is concentrated on their Wi-Fi networks, and 73% of organizations already face or expect to face campus and branch capacity limitations within the next 24 months. This is largely because large majorities of organizations report increases in east-west traffic, latency-sensitive traffic, and continuous, automated AI traffic. While the large majority of AI to date has come from foundation models running on central infrastructure, we are seeing enterprises deploy more small language models, open-source models, and specialized models—such as vision and voice models—which can be distributed throughout the network. Each of these characteristics underscores the value of the FCC’s forward-thinking decision in 2020 to authorize the full 6 GHz band for unlicensed Wi-Fi use,” Everson said.\n\nIn his prepared remarks, Everson cited a number of areas that are impacted by AI, including:\n\nNetworks will leverage AI for increased performance and resiliency, Everson stated.\n\n“While AI workloads present several challenges for network operators seeking to ensure seamless performance, reliability, and security, there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage AI to deliver new applications and better performance, infuse security into the fabric of the network, and manage the increased complexity,” Everson said. “Agentic AI will change the nature of traffic on the network, but it will also provide network operators new tools to operate at machine speed and deliver greater performance, efficiency, and security.”\n\nAgenticOps also lets the network act as a self-healing system, Everson said. “Cisco’s AI-native tools enable the network to reroute traffic, adjust capacity, or reconfigure network nodes when the system detects performance degradation or an impending hardware failure. This dramatically increases uptime and reliability for mission-critical services,” Everson said.\n\nOne of the most significant challenges for network operators is the talent gap in managing increasingly complex, software-defined networks, Everson said.\n\n“AgenticOps allows operators to automate repetitive, low-value tasks—such as ticket resolution, configuration updates, and routine maintenance. These tools also help close the workforce talent gap by lowering the barrier. to entry and allowing more junior analysts to ramp up quickly,” Everson said. “By automating these tasks, Cisco’s AI-enabled platforms can free network engineers to focus on higher-level architectural strategy and innovation, and free cybersecurity analysts to dedicate more time to strategic threat hunting and detection engineering.”\n\nIn addition to changes in traffic patterns, networks are moving toward AI-native platforms that will become the fabric of intelligent connectivity rather than a simple pipe. As network operators move compute toward the network edge—such as at a cell site where a tower sits—they will be able to run applications directly from the network, Everson said.\n\n“One promising application is Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC), which combines wireless communications and radio-frequency sensing to “see” objects’ position and path using radio waves that reflect off them. Unlike optical sensors, it can detect intrusion even in low-light conditions, through smoke, or around obstructions where traditional video analytics might fail,” Everson said. “This technology has been prototyped and demonstrated already, and it holds great promise for autonomous systems and robotics, AI-driven smart facilities, and public safety.”\n\nIn closing, Everson offered three suggestions for the committee to act on in the future:", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cisco-exec-testifies-at-us-senate-panel-on-ais-network-impact", "canonical_source": "https://www.networkworld.com/article/4204576/cisco-exec-testifies-at-us-senate-panel-on-ais-network-impact.html", "published_at": "2026-08-03 20:26:05+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-03 20:35:40.665289+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Cisco", "Bob Everson", "U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media", "Deb Fischer", "U.S. Telecom", "Vanderbilt University", "Nebraska Public Service Commission", "FCC"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cisco-exec-testifies-at-us-senate-panel-on-ais-network-impact", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cisco-exec-testifies-at-us-senate-panel-on-ais-network-impact.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cisco-exec-testifies-at-us-senate-panel-on-ais-network-impact.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cisco-exec-testifies-at-us-senate-panel-on-ais-network-impact.jsonld"}}