English

NetAgentBench: A State-Centric Benchmark for Evaluating Agentic Network Configuration

Networking and Internet Architecture 2026-04-14 v1 Artificial Intelligence Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

As agentic network management gains popularity, there is a critical need for evaluation frameworks that transcend static, one-shot testing. To address this, we introduce NetAgentBench, a dynamic benchmark that evaluates agent interactions through a Finite State Machine (FSM) formalization guaranteeing determinism, correctness, and bounded execution. This provides the networking landscape with a rigorous foundation to measure complex, multi-turn operational behaviors. Our empirical evaluation of four state-of-the-art LLM agents through diverse network configuration tasks reveals stark deficiencies: while agents can solve basic tasks, they suffer severe exploration meltdowns and coherence collapse during expert-level configurations. Ultimately, NetAgentBench demonstrates that systematically evaluating multi-turn behavioral stability is an indispensable step toward realizing trustworthy, fully autonomous networks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.09678,
  title  = {NetAgentBench: A State-Centric Benchmark for Evaluating Agentic Network Configuration},
  author = {Ahmed Twabi and Yepeng Ding and Tohru Kondo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.09678},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:03:28.540Z