AN INTELLIGENT MOBILE-AGENT BASED SCALABLE NETWORK MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURE FOR LARGE-SCALE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM

Several Mobile Agent based distributed network management models have been proposed in recent times toaddress the scalability and flexibility problems of centralized (SNMP or CMIP management models)models. Though the use of Mobile Agents to distribute and delegate management tasks comes handy indealing with the previously stated issues, many of the agent-based management frameworks like initial flatbed models and static mid-level managers employing mobile agents models cannot efficiently meet thedemands of current networks which are growing in size and complexity. Moreover, varied technologies,such as SONET, ATM, Ethernet, DWDM etc., present at different layers of the Access, Metro and Core(long haul) sections of the network, have contributed to the complexity in terms of their own framing andprotocol structures. Thus, controlling and managing the traffic in these networks is a challenging task. Thispaper presents an intelligent scalable hierarchical agent based model for the management of large-scalecomplex networks to address aforesaid issues. The cost estimation, carried out with a view to compute theoverall management cost in terms of management data overhead, is being presented. The results obtainedthereafter establish the usefulness of the presented architecture as compare to centralized and flat bedagent based models.