It's Not Your Model: AI Has a Data Movement Problem
Network World, Monday, October 12th, 2026
Enterprise AI projects are stalling on network bandwidth and latency, as agents generate far more bursty traffic than humans.
This contributed column argues that after heavy spending on models, compute and GPUs, many organizations cannot reliably reach what they built.
It cites research showing that 59% of organizations report bandwidth issues, up from 43% a year earlier, while latency problems rose from 32% to 53%.
Traditional networks were designed for predictable human transactions, but an AI agent can generate up to 450% more network traffic per task than a human.
That traffic is distributed, bursty, concurrent and machine-speed, which is why AI pilots that succeed often struggle when scaled into production.