A software agent architecture for network management : case studies and experience-gained

Current Network Management paradigms are rigid and lack exibility. This makes the task of managing a highly-evolving and dynamic network difficult to cope with. This paper presents the results of our work on the Agent technology as a new paradigm to develop Network Management applications. Firstly, we present our agent architecture that is built in a way that allows the agent to acquire at runtime new capabilities encapsulated in skill modules . Secondly, we present two case studies implemented with a prototype of this agent architecture. The purpose of the first one is to build an agent system in which faulty agents are automatically detected and their tasks are then reallocated to the other agents, thus providing a fault tolerant management system. The second case study deals with the configuration of heterogeneous ATM networks to establish end-to-end permanent virtual channels. Finally, we evaluate, based on these two case studies, our agent architecture and the agent paradigm in general when applied to Network Management.