Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Whether it’s streaming video, powering remote work, or supporting smart technologies, the ability to connect local users to the global internet is essential. But behind the scenes, a key infrastructure layer ensures that this digital experience runs smoothly: the middle mile. Middle mile networks serve as the critical bridge between the internet’s backbone and the local networks that deliver service to homes, businesses, and institutions.

Network operators across the digital ecosystem are under pressure to cut costs while protecting revenue. This post explores three practical use cases where Kentik Traffic Costs helps turn traffic insight into commercial intelligence that helps teams negotiate smarter, protect margins, and boost profitability.

As network teams constantly search for new ways to simplify and optimize their networks, it helps to hear from experts who have spent years at the center of these transformations. One of these voices is Fabio D’Avino, a specialist in Network as a Service (NaaS) with more than seven years of experience researching, designing, and building global network services across industries.

A little while ago, I wrote a piece with the provocative title, "The End of the Network Engineer as We Know It?" It struck a chord because it articulated a shift many of us feel in our bones: the ground is moving beneath our feet. The traditional, well-defined corporate network has dissolved into a sprawling, borderless ecosystem of public clouds, SaaS platforms, and the vast, untamed internet. The old role, focused on the care and feeding of devices within our four walls, is no longer sufficient.

These days, maintaining uptime of your servers and other infrastructure elements remains as critical as ever—but it’s not enough. Quite simply, even the best server reliability metrics won’t mean a thing if the user experience is poor. What truly matters is understanding the service levels your users experience, whether they’re accessing apps through a web browser or interacting with API-based services.