HPE announces autonomous networking capabilities

Offering autonomous networking capabilities to accelerate secure, artificial intelligence (AI)-native operations, HPE has unveiled self-driving network capabilities that it says will enable customers to boost efficiency and proactive operations, and significantly reduce help desk tickets.

HPE said it was clear that the self-driving network is no longer aspirational; it is operational – and with the introduction of self-driving actions across HPE Mist and HPE Aruba Central lines, it is delivering on its vision of secure, AI-native, fully autonomous networking by enabling networks that can detect, diagnose and resolve issues in real time without human intervention.

Central to this approach is what the company calls a differentiated architecture powered by microservices, autonomous agents and an advanced agentic mesh, designed to move beyond insight-driven operations to true autonomy, and proactively resolve issues before they impact revenue, operations or brand reputation.

The autonomous agents – the capabilities of which form the base of the self‑driving network – are intended to further reduce the need for manual intervention, delivering capacity and radio optimisation, self-securing actions and user roaming issue resolution.

Together, said HPE, these capabilities enable networks to proactively improve user experience and prevent issues before they disrupt business operations. Self‑driving actions designed to optimise and secure end user experiences include: dynamic capacity optimisation; autonomous missing virtual local area network (VLAN) remediation; rogue DHCP protection; real-time dynamic frequency selection (DFS); client roaming insights; and user experience latency metrics.

Capacity optimisation features will now autonomously identify capacity bottlenecks, and dynamically tunes RF parameters, including band selection, channel bandwidth and power levels, beyond predefined operational ranges by leveraging learned utilisation patterns. This is intended to deliver optimised end-user capacity, coverage and roaming experiences for wireless users.

Autonomous missing VLAN remediation offers a trusted self-driving action that autonomously fixes VLAN configuration errors in the access layer to prevent blackholing of client traffic. This is an evolution from driver-assisted VLAN remediation, assuring even faster problem resolution for better user experiences.

The system also autonomously detects and remediates unauthorised DHCP servers to mitigate potential external security risks and prevent end user connectivity disruptions. DFS capabilities mean that self-driving complements AI-driven radio resource management (RRM) to adaptively learn and proactively avoid association issues on frequently impacted channels to mitigate wireless client disruptions.

Client roaming insights are designed to ensure smooth, uninterrupted roaming for users by analysing client connectivity metrics, including location, leading to self-driving actions. In addition, the features are designed to accelerate root‑cause identification by measuring Wi‑Fi performance at “first connect” and providing clear, end‑to‑end visibility into latency from the user’s device to the cloud.

Both HPE Mist and HPE Aruba Central also support expanded OpenRoaming integration to reduce costs and operational complexity while supporting easier, more secure Wi-Fi access across locations without constant logins, and protecting users with strong identity checks. This capability is attributed with helping to simplify operations and move organisations faster towards zero trust security.

Rami Rahim, executive vice-president, and president and general manager of networking at HPE, said: “The network HPE now delivers represents a pivotal shift for our customers and marks a breakaway moment for them to capture the benefits of the next frontier of autonomous actions. This fundamentally changes the role of networking from a system that informs to one that takes action on behalf of the business, freeing customer networking teams to focus on innovation instead of operations.”

In addition to outlining the capabilities of the products, HPE also pointed to customers gaining benefits from full agentic autonomy via a self-driving network, one of which was the UK Ministry of Justice, which is said to have significantly improved network operations, achieving a “significant” reduction in help desk tickets and dramatically streamlining issue resolution.

“Over the past four years, the Ministry of Justice has transformed how it operates a highly complex, multi‑vendor digital estate, embedding intelligence directly into the network at national scale,” said Nava Ramanan, director of technology at the Ministry of Justice. “The HPE self-driving network enables trusted autonomous actions that help us anticipate and resolve issues before users are impacted. This approach has contributed to an approximate 75% reduction in service desk tickets and enabled us to bring the management of around 15,000 devices in‑house, giving our teams greater ownership, control and flexibility to deliver resilient, always‑on justice services today and into the future.”