Mobile agents in distributed network management

Abstract

helping to disperse centralized network management tasks to subnet hosts, mobile agent technology helps conserve network bandwidth and improves management efficiency by decreasing network traffic.O nly a few years ago, most networks were LANs with iimited linkages between equipment. During that era, networks were managed via the centralized architecture. Since this architecture is simple and effective, network administration tasks were carried out on a personal computer or workstation. But the recent growth of Internet applications has led to an explosion in the number of networks worldwide, which has placed a heavy burden upon the networks as well as the administrators. It is not surprising then, that the conventional centralized architecture is not sufficient to manage such changes. In this architecture, the central network server routinely requests the status information of local units, which consumes a significant amount of bandwidth. In addition, communication data may be lost during transmission. It is therefore common today to share management tasks with other network management servers in a distributed framework [6].In a distributed network, the network administrator monitors the trend of network flow to evaluate network performance and diagnose abnormal situations. The analysis data can be obtained from the management information base (MIB) of network equipments. The MIB maintains many data objects for network management, such as system data, equipment status, link status, and communication status, among others [7]. The MIB data is organized in groups and preserved in a tree-like structure. This provides an opportunity to manage the complicated network tasks in the distributed network management environment.The new trend in networks involves using mobile agents [1, 3, 4] to manage the distributed network system [2]. The mobile agent can be used to retrieve data from the MIB to monitor the network flow in the distributed environment. That is, management tasks are assigned to an agent and the agent can be sent to remote hosts to execute the assignment. After completing the assignment, the results are carried back to the sender by the agent. In such a case, local subordinate network (subnet) hosts can share the workload with the central network server. This approach has several advantages as described by [9]. In addition, the mobile agent can transform the conventional centralized network architecture into a distributed administrative environment. In case the linkage between the network management server and the subnet breaks down, the mobile agent and the data can temporarily reside at the agent box of local hosts and be retracted afber the linkage is restored. This design is suitable for an unstable network environment.With recent research 181 suggesting the next strategy for executives is to outsource information technology to Internet-based services instead of having their own proprietary information systems, we will undoubtedly see a dra-

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