Cisco ThousandEyes

ThousandEyes deploys cloud agents and on-premises enterprise agents that simulate real user HTTP and DNS transactions against SaaS platforms including Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and Google Workspace. These synthetic transactions measure response time, identify network path issues, and determine whether latency originates from the user's ISP, a transit provider, or the SaaS provider's own infrastructure. This is particularly valuable for troubleshooting Microsoft Teams call quality issues where the root cause could be anywhere along the path.

Cisco acquired ThousandEyes in May 2020 for approximately $1 billion. ThousandEyes was integrated into Cisco's Networking Services business unit and complements Cisco's broader observability strategy alongside AppDynamics (application performance monitoring) and Cisco Secure (security analytics). The acquisition gave Cisco deep internet-path visibility capabilities that its existing networking products lacked.

Yes, ThousandEyes continuously monitors BGP route announcements and path changes across the global internet, alerting when traffic is being routed through unexpected autonomous systems (ASNs). It can detect BGP hijacking, route leaks, and peering disputes that may degrade or redirect application traffic. The platform visualizes these paths on a global map showing hop-by-hop ASN and latency data.

ThousandEyes offers three agent types: cloud agents (hosted by ThousandEyes in data centers worldwide for external-in testing), enterprise agents (deployed on customer premises as VMs, Docker containers, or Cisco network devices for internal testing), and endpoint agents (lightweight software on user laptops and mobile devices for real-user monitoring). Cloud agents provide always-on external perspective, enterprise agents give visibility into internal network segments, and endpoint agents capture actual user experience from remote workers.