Enterprise organizations deal with countless network incidents monthly, consuming vast hours of engineering time, and can save significantly with even a small reduction in Mean Time to Repair (MTTR).
Many teams overlook the recurring patterns in these incidents, troubleshooting each from scratch as if they are unique. This approach causes redundant work, inconsistent outcomes, and repetitive troubleshooting. By applying network automation to repetitive tasks, teams can minimize MTTR and resolve incidents within hours, rather than days or weeks.
MTTR measures how long it takes, on average, to detect, diagnose, and resolve a network issue once it occurs. It reflects the efficiency of both your response processes and the tools supporting them. A lower MTTR means a quicker recovery, less downtime, and fewer disruptions to operations. High MTTR often signals gaps in visibility, collaboration, or documentation, especially in complex or hybrid environments.
Consistency is also part of the automation value. One of the biggest challenges in traditional network troubleshooting is that it’s a very individual art, based on the knowledge and experience of each engineer. And since network engineers are working through a variety of different tools – their resolutions will be highly unique and rarely transferrable to additional situations that they or their colleagues may encounter in the future. In addition, NetBrain’s Dynamic Network Map becomes the single pane of glass for troubleshooting which becomes the foundation for automated Network Intent diagnostics to be applied. This results in a more concise process and ensures that there is visibility into the entire troubleshooting process.
Often, the biggest drag on repair times is the lack of real-time end-to-end network visibility. Engineers usually spend the first hours of an incident piecing together context, running basic diagnostics, locating accurate topology data, and trying to understand the scope of the issue.
Outdated maps and incomplete documentation further slow this down — even small inaccuracies can derail the entire troubleshooting process. Every time the team has to manually reconstruct the problem space, it costs time and increases risk.
Effective resolutions require insight into the original design intent, current configuration, live performance metrics, and security posture. Automation that provides live diagnostics and compares behavior against established baselines can deliver that level of visibility.
NetBrain helps organizations reduce mean time to repair in three critical ways:
Troubleshooting network issues can be overwhelming, particularly when traditional monitoring tools only surface device-level alerts without offering a broader view. They often fail to show how different systems and services are impacted. NetBrain’s intent-based automation platform can minimize troubleshooting time by automating hundreds of pre-built and shared diagnostics.
Every part of the network may be described by its connectivity. By leveraging our Network Intent technology, real-time performance requirements and security profiles are visible as well. A network of 1000 physical or virtual services should actually be described by TEN-TIMES that amount of Network Intents, or 10,000 Intents! (And NetBrain makes it easy to generate all of those Network Intents since we can apply problem-solving of similar situations across the network at scale.)
Consistency is also part of the automation value. One of the biggest challenges in traditional network troubleshooting is that it’s a very individual art, based on the knowledge and experience of each engineer. Since network engineers are working through a variety of different tools, their resolutions will be highly unique and rarely transferable to additional situations that they or their colleagues may encounter in the future.
Instead, NetBrain’s Dynamic Network Map becomes the primary source for troubleshooting, which becomes the foundation for automated Network Intent diagnostics to be applied. This results in a more concise process, ensuring visibility into the entire troubleshooting process.
Network teams depend on documentation to troubleshoot effectively, yet many still work without reliable diagrams. Large-scale network documentation often takes months, and by the time it’s complete, the information is already outdated.
NetBrain lets you automate network diagram creation and keep these diagrams up to date using our patented auto-discovery technology, which interacts with each device’s L2 and L3 tables, along with a wealth of other details, to establish a real-time view of the entire network, from edge to cloud. It includes visibility and control of all of the major cloud providers’ virtual controllers and services. This dynamic view provides vastly more detail than ever seen before!
To troubleshoot network issues, engineers need to know how traffic flows across the live network, from the source to the destination, in both directions. Because there’s no diagram for each traffic flow, engineers rely on traceroute, which is a command-line utility that tracks the path of network packets, to understand traffic paths.
With modern networks, engineers need more visibility than traceroute can provide. NetBrain enables engineers to dynamically map any traffic flow with just the source and destination address. The flows will include all the required performance metrics included in those views.
Troubleshooting can be a lengthy process when various organizations must get involved. Other operational teams are typically engaged through escalation, which delays problem solving. As a real-time platform, multiple engineers can collaborate in real time to address any issue.
With NetBrain, NetOps, SecOps, DevOps, and other operational teams can apply automation to every troubleshooting phase, from ticket creation, to data collection, all the way to sharing knowledge of best practices. In each phase, sharing key insights is critical, and this can be accomplished by sharing a single map URL. Collaboration is critical, but it also takes valuable time, and enhancing the collaboration process will ultimately reduce mean time to repair.
To strengthen collaboration, network teams can turn existing scripts, design notes, manuals, and tribal knowledge into Executable Runbooks. These runbooks transform best practices into repeatable actions, making critical expertise accessible and executable by every team member.
Reducing MTTR demands intelligent automation that enforces design intent, accelerates diagnostics, and supports collaboration. NetBrain delivers these benefits, helping teams respond faster and operate more efficiently across a hybrid, multi-vendor environment. Schedule a demo to see how we can help you transform your troubleshooting workflows.