Sentinel network devices and sentinel marker

A computing system includes one or more processors and memory that includes instructions, that when executed by the one or more processors, cause the processors to receive, by a sentinel device of a data interface of a distributed computing environment, command instructions that instruct a plurality of networking devices to change state to implement network configuration requests from a synchronization node of a distribution interface of the distributed computing environment utilizing a communication protocol. The data interface includes a networking group that includes the sentinel device and the edge devices. The instructions also cause the processors to identify, by the sentinel device, distribution latency patterns of the command instructions based on distribution delay of the command instructions and generate, by the sentinel device, an alarm based on a determination that the distribution delay of one of the command instructions exceeds a threshold value.