Mobile Agents as a Solution
The Perpetuum Solution : The research thrust of the Perpetuum project is the use of mobile intelligent agents for network management. We envision a network manager as a suite of problem-specific applications that launch and/or communicate with autonomous mobile network agents that we call netlets. The intent is to provide an extensible set of tools that shift the operator’s focus from MIB browsing to problem-solving. In this poster, we demonstrate this shift by applying mobile agents to network modeling. A broader definition of network modeling is proposed, and a mobile agent implementation of a Network Model Browser is explained, including innovative extensions that transform this model discovery tool into a problem-browser.
To explore practical issues in applying mobile agents to network management, the Perpetuum project built an infrastructure for mobile code. The Mobile Code Kit[2] is an agent execution environment, written in Java. Each component to be managed must be Java-enabled and must have running a Mobile Code Daemon (MCD). The MCD is a process that listens on “standardized” TCP and UDP ports to receive Java code from a manager or from another MCD. The MCD is responsible for the authentication and storage of incoming mobile code, the transport of migrating code, as well the link to the component’s managed resources, called the Virtual Managed Component (VMC). The VMC is supplied by the vendor to tailor how the component is to be managed through a standardized agent interface. Minimally, the VMC provides SNMP-like information. More powerful are facilities that allow an agent to characterize “normal” operating conditions, to reboot the device, to run diagnostics, or to even download other methods or software upgrades from a vendor’s central store.