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AI adoption is accelerating faster than most enterprise networks can evolve. In a recent IBM webinar, we brought together thought leaders from IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh and NS1 Connect to explore how enterprise networking must evolve to support the next wave of AI innovation. As enterprises race to adopt intelligent agents and autonomous systems, traditional networking approaches are showing their age and their limits.
The world of digital interaction is undergoing a profound transformation. Connecting the Agentic World - this webinar highlighted why DNS is your AI infrastructures best friend and that the internet is no longer just for people. It is for agents – AI driven entities acting on behalf of customers, partners and employees. To succeed in this new era, networks must evolve to handle secure, dynamic and policy-aware connectivity at global scale.
Why Agents Change Everything
Unlike traditional applications, agents aren’t tied to a single location or predictable lifecycle. They’re everywhere—spinning up in clouds, at the edge, and even on user devices—constantly making decisions and exchanging data. This means networks must handle millions of short-lived, high-frequency transactions across environments, often between entities that have never interacted before. Traditional perimeter-based networking simply wasn’t designed for this level of dynamism and scale.
Key Takeaways:
AI breaks Legacy Networking AI breaks legacy networking models—static, location-based architectures can’t keep up. Agent-based AI workloads are ephemeral, dynamic and distributed. Static, location-based networks and brittle VPN architectures can’t keep pace. Enterprises need dynamic resolution, semantic discovery and policy aware routing to support AI at scale.
Resilient discovery is critical AI agents are like digital fireflies – appearing, acting and disappearing in seconds. To support this, discovery systems must deliver:
Low latency and global scale
Verifiable identity and rapid revocation
Semantic understanding.
Authoritative DNS, Real User Monitoring (RUM) and intelligent traffic steering (like IBM NS1 Connect) are essential to keep dynamic workloads discoverable and performant. Emerging protocols like Agent Name Service (ANS), Google’s A2A and Project NANDA build on DNS’s distributed model layered in identity, semantics and trust. These protocols don’t replace DNS—they extend it, leveraging its global, distributed nature as the backbone for agent discovery. DNS isn’t obsolete – it is evolving into the foundation for scalable agent discovery.
Performance at Scale is Non-Negotiable Agents don’t just increase query volumes – they multiple them. Trillions of DNS queries per day today could easily grow tenfold in the agentic era. That means:
Low latency and global distribution are critical to avoid slowing down agent interactions.
Resilient, fault tolerant DNS architectures are required to ensure availability even in the face of outages.
Advanced traffic steering with live telemetry (like RUM) enables DNS to react to ‘internet weather’ in real time, steering agents away from congestion or failures.
DNS is no long just a phonebook – it is the brain behind agent connectivity, making sure every interaction is fast, reliable and smart.
Connectivity must be Identity-Driven Once agents are discovered, they need to interact. With agents operating across diverse and untrusted environments, traditional perimeter security is no longer enough. This is where application centric overlays and Zero Trust networking (like IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh) ensure secure, scalable connections across hybrid and multi-cloud environments by explicitly verifying every user and device for every access request.
Why it Matters
In the agentic era, DNS isn’t just a utility – it is the backbone of AI connectivity. It enables:
Agent discovery through semantic resolution and verifiable identity and the ability to advertise capabilities.
Agent interaction via low-latency, policy aware routing, ensure seamless communication across distributed systems.
Agent optimization with real-time telemetry and adaptive traffic steering, directing agents to the best available endpoint based on performance, cost and even energy efficiency.
Legacy DNS and networking stacks were not built for this. They introduce latency, blind spots and risk – especially as AI adoption accelerates.
The combination of IBM NS1 Connect and Hybrid Cloud Mesh offers an AI-ready foundation that provides always-on discovery, intelligent steering, and secure, app-centric connectivity and ironclad security.
The Bottom Line
Whether you are deploying autonomous agents, coordinating multi-clouds services or building AI driven customer experiences, your network must evolve to meet the moment.
The agentic era demands an intelligent, resilient and secure connectivity strategy – and it starts with DNS.
Next Steps Want to dive deeper? Here’s how to continue the conversation:
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More information
You may be interested in a recent blog on how Blocking AI Bots with IBM NS1 Connect creates a smarter DNS strategy for the Age of AI – read it here
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By
Claire ODonovan
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