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 Instana with observability in networks

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Frankin Hernandez's profile image
Frankin Hernandez posted Thu December 04, 2025 06:55 AM

I need to understand if Instana can have observability processes for the network components of a company, given that it operates in a SaaS mode.

Bart Bogaerts's profile image
Bart Bogaerts posted Wed December 10, 2025 07:23 AM

Hi Frankin,

As you cannot install Instana agents locally on the network devices, you are limited here. If the network device has OpenTelemetry capabilities, then you could tell the device to send its OTEL data to the Instana backend.

Regards,

Bart Bogaerts

Clecimar Fernandes's profile image
Clecimar Fernandes posted Fri December 12, 2025 02:53 PM

Hi Franklin,

I would frame this more as a conceptual limitation than a tooling one.

Network devices mainly expose operational state and traffic statistics. Even if they can emit metrics via OpenTelemetry, OTEL works here as a transport layer, not as true observability telemetry.

Without native tracing and context propagation, this remains network monitoring or analytics, not observability in the strict sense used for distributed systems.

Observability applies far more naturally to the services running on top of the network than to the network itself.

Regards,

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