February 23, 2026

Howdy. We have some big news to cover this week; Arista issues a blunt outlook on memory costs, Ubiquiti hardware is showing up in active combat zones, and Cisco went all in on Agentic AI last week. As always, thank you for reading - and hit us up with any feedback.

Today’s edition:

Let’s dive in.

Ruckus launched a line of switches purpose-built for AV-over-IP, and the timing reflects a real shift in how enterprises think about in-office infrastructure. As hybrid work pushes companies to invest in conference rooms, digital signage, and distributed display systems, the pressure to run high-quality video over existing Ethernet rather than maintaining a separate AV network is growing. Ruckus's answer is software that automatically recognizes AV protocols and handles traffic prioritization at the switch level, removing the need for AV integrators and IT teams to negotiate complex network configurations every time a room gets built out.

Arista posted $9 billion in 2025 revenue, up 28.6%, and is targeting $3.25 billion in AI networking revenue in 2026, but CEO Jayshree Ullal described the current memory supply situation as "horrendous," with costs running an order of magnitude higher and shortages expected to persist for multiple years. Arista has largely absorbed the costs so far and may begin selectively raising prices on memory-intensive SKUs.

According to Reuters, a draft Unit 42 threat report by Palo Alto Networks attributed a global espionage campaign to China, but the final published version described the threat actor only as "a state-aligned group that operates out of Asia." Sources told Reuters the change followed Palo Alto being blacklisted by Chinese authorities in January, which restricts domestic Chinese firms from using its software. Palo Alto denied the attribution change was connected to Chinese procurement regulations.

Cisco's AgenticOps push, announced at Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam, is worth examining not just as a product update but as a signal of where the broader enterprise networking market is heading. The announcement extended autonomous operations across Cisco's networking, security, and observability stack, adding capabilities like autonomous troubleshooting across campus and branch networks, intent-aware AI traffic inspection in SASE, and an AI Bill of Materials for supply chain visibility into models and agents.

Between the lines: The timing is not coincidental. Multiple industry surveys heading into 2026 flagged a common theme: enterprises are deploying AI faster than their IT operations can scale to manage it. Fragmented tooling, alert fatigue, and understaffed network teams are the operational reality for most organizations outside the hyperscale tier. The agentic operations play, whether it comes from Cisco, HPE, or a startup like Meter Networks, is fundamentally a response to that gap. The promise is that AI can handle Tier 1 and Tier 2 network operations autonomously, freeing engineers for higher-order work. Whether any vendor has actually delivered that in production at scale is a different question from whether the roadmap is credible.

The broader read: Cisco's advantage in this conversation is the breadth of telemetry it can pull from, combining Nexus, Security Cloud Control, Splunk, and ThousandEyes into a single operational data layer. That matters because agentic operations are only as good as the data feeding them. The risk is that most enterprise environments are not pure Cisco stacks, and cross-vendor telemetry is where these platforms historically lose fidelity. The vendors that figure out how to run agentic operations across genuinely heterogeneous infrastructure, not just their own portfolio, will likely lead in defining the next decade of network management.

Read the full summary from Cisco

An investigative report by Hunterbrook alleges that Ubiquiti radio bridge equipment is widely used by Russian military forces in Ukraine, with Ukrainian officials estimating roughly 80% of Russian radio bridges observed on the battlefield are Ubiquiti-made. Despite U.S. and EU export bans, reporters claim they were able to source restricted Ubiquiti gear through official distributors and third-country routing, a common sanctions evasion tactic. Trade data cited in the report shows Ubiquiti shipments into Russia surged after the invasion, including newer models released post-ban.

Why this matters now: Sanctions violations operate under strict liability, meaning intent is largely irrelevant to enforcement. For a company like Ubiquiti, which sells through a sprawling global distributor network, controlling where hardware ends up is genuinely difficult. But "difficult" is not a legal defense, and the combination of alleged distribution ties to sanctioned intermediaries and prior violations involving Iran creates a compliance posture that regulators tend to find difficult to ignore.

The open question: This situation reflects a broader trend that enterprise procurement teams should be paying attention to. Companies are increasingly being held accountable not just for what they sell, but where it ends up. Weak distribution controls are no longer just an ethical issue, they are a material business risk. Learn more about this here.

Learn more about this here.

🤖 NetBrain 12.3 added AI agents that autonomously diagnose network issues and suggest fixes, handling 90% of real-world issues in testing (NetBrain)

🇨🇳 Palo Alto Networks closed its $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk, the largest deal in cybersecurity history. (Reuters)

🔎 Nokia's latest WAN forecast projects 300-700% traffic growth by 2034 driven by AI, though independent analysts pushed back. (Network World)

Catch up