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Advanced Network Management
(NM) with mobile agents
The Perpetuum Mobile Procura Project
Dr. Andrzej Bieszczad
Carleton University
Problem with legacy NM Systems

Few managers - many agents model
• lots of data transmission
• high CPU costs
• synchronization of the databases and the network

Heterogeneous environment
• interoperability problems
• proliferation of human-machine interfaces (HMI)

Monolithic applications
• often price paid in size and performance
• hard to maintain

Manager/operator intensive
Project goals

Explore the use of mobile agents to
overcome the problems of legacy systems

Explore intelligent distributed management
methods

Deliver a Java-based platform for simulated
and actual network management
 Educate
Description


Address the throughput problem by
delegating authority
Limit the use of processing resources
through periodic execution
 Synchronize views of a network by
automatic and continuous provisioning
 Limit the requirements for human attention
by delegation and employing intelligent
managing methods
Description (continued)

Address the HMI problems with NM tools
based on Web standards
 Engineer a suite of simple NM tools rather
than a monolith, so the size and
performance are not sacrificed
 Use distribution and extensibility to keep
maintainability under control
 Overcome the interoperability issues by
plug-and-play capability
Technology used

Mobile code
– servlets
– netlets
– applets

JAVA
–
–
–
–
portability
code mobility
Web support
very strong support from the industry
Technology generated

code mobility toolkit
– mobility mechanism
• transport
• migration

Virtual Managed Components
–
–
–
–
attributes
constraints
recovery
plug and play
Technology generated (continued)

interface to legacy systems (initially through
SNMP/DPI)
 extensibility scheme for legacy systems
(initially through SNMP/DPI)
 Web-based NM tools
 simulated environment for explorations
Competitive Analysis (technology)
– JMAPI (Sun)
• complete NM solution for traditional NM
– Servlets (Sun)
• uses Java’s RMI (RPC-like framework)
– Aglets (IBM)
• addresses high level software utility agents
• uses Java’s RMI
– SAIC Afterburner Agent Framework
• a DAI workbench re-implemented in Java
– Java2go
• a toolkit for mobile code
Competitive Analysis (research)

Agents are popular almost at every
research center
• most work falls into Distributed AI
• theories rooted in logic

NM with mobile agents - few centers
– NM by delegation
• Columbia U., Y. Yemini
– Mobile agents for telecommunications
• Technical University of Berlin, T. Megadantz
– Diagnosis with agents
• University of Hannover, W. Nejdl
Staff
– Bernard Pagurek, Professor
• head
– supervisor
– Andrzej Bieszczad, Adjunct Professor
• senior researcher
– co-supervisor
– Cheryl Schramm
• software engineer
– Agent-oriented Web-based management tools
Master’s students/projects
– Gatot Susilo:
• A Java-based mobile code framework for
advanced network management
– Ahmed Mohgrabi:
• Problem-based management with miniexperts (intentional)
Other projects
– 4th year projects
• Andre Campeau:
– Simulated network environment for explorations
in network management based on mobile agents
– NM course project
• Pierre Ernst:
– Novel approaches to agent extensibility
Collaborators
– Tony White (principal NM researcher, NRC ;
Ph.D. candidate, SCE)
• swarm intelligence for intelligent networking
– Amir Zeid (Ph.D. candidate, SCS)
• system management (TINA, ODP)
• Towards plug-and-play networks
Projects not staffed
– Towards self-repairing networks
– automatic fault recovery
– Towards plug and play networks
– automatic provisioning
– Network and netlet security
– preventing piglets
– density control
– Intelligent methods for NM
– particularly diagnosis and fault management
– prospects for many projects applying Distributed
Artificial and Computational Intelligence
Schedule

Mobility toolkit - available now
 Simulator - April’97
 Virtual Managed Component Interface - Summer’97
 Manager tools - will start to appear in April/May’97
 Problem-based management - end of 1997
 Other DAI methods - 1998+
 Plug and play networking - 1998+
 Self-repairing networks - 1998+
FOR MORE INFO...

URL:
http://www.sce.carleton.ca/netmanage/perpetum.shtml