One of the most common steps in investigating a network issue is validating connectivity from the right vantage point—checking whether a destination is reachable, measuring latency or packet loss, and identifying where traffic may be breaking down along the path. Traditionally, that means switching tools to run ping or traceroute, then manually bringing those results back into the troubleshooting process.

With On-demand Connectivity Test, AI Advisor can perform that step for you directly from a Kentik Universal Agent. This keeps the investigation in one place, reduces context switching, and adds another source of real-time diagnostic data that AI Advisor can use alongside other telemetry as it reasons through the problem.

What It Does

The Connectivity Test tool provides Ping and Traceroute diagnostics directly from your private Universal Agents through AI Advisor's conversational interface:

• Ping: Test device connectivity, measure latency, and detect packet loss
• Traceroute: Identify network bottlenecks, points of failure, or routing loops
• Private vantage points: Run tests from your own network locations where Universal Agents are deployed

How to Get Started

Prerequisites:

1. Deploy at least one Universal Agent (Settings » Universal Agents)
2. Install the Connectivity Test capability on the agent:
   • Open the Agent Details drawer
   • Under Capabilities » Available, click Install next to Connectivity Test

Once installed, AI Advisor automatically detects available agents and includes them in its system context (agent names, site locations, etc.).

How to Use It

Simply ask AI Advisor in natural language to test the connectivity to the destinations of interest.

Here are example prompts:

• Test the connectivity to device ABC1
• Ping 8.8.8.8 with 5 packets
• Traceroute to 147.91.1.120
• Check if we can reach our DNS server from the Boston office
• Run a traceroute from our London agent to 1.1.1.1

AI Advisor will:

1. Select the appropriate Universal Agent(s)
2. Execute the ping or traceroute test
3. Display results with success/failure indicators
4. Interpret ICMP responses and provide actionable insights

Key Benefits

On-Demand Connectivity Tests help teams investigate issues more efficiently by combining real-time diagnostics with the broader network context already available in AI Advisor. Because these diagnostics run inside AI Advisor and remain part of the investigation, they can improve both the speed and quality of troubleshooting in several ways:

• Context-aware: AI Advisor knows your agent locations and can suggest the best vantage point
• Conversational troubleshooting: No need to SSH into servers or use separate tools
• Multi-agent support: Can run tests from multiple agents simultaneously for comparison
• Integrated analysis: Correlate connectivity results with flow data, metrics, alerts, and other telemetry
• Faster MTTR: Quickly validate reachability during incident investigations

Ready to try it? Quickly install Universal Agent's Connectivity Test and start testing with AI Advisor!