Distributed network management system for ATM switches using mobile agents

Current network management systems centralize management responsibilities onto platforms, and depend on labor intensive operations by network administrators. This complex and labor intensive management paradigm has been stretched to its limits by the scale and complexity of emerging networks. Decentralization of management will help resolve scalability and resiliency limitations, This paper presents the use of mobile agents to distribute and automate management functions. Mobile agents are software entities that can move through a telecommunication network under their own control, migrating from network node to node. The importance of the mobile agents and decentralized network strategies lies on the distribution of the network management and control. These paradigms take advantage of the high computational power given to agents and decrease pressure on centralized network management systems, network bandwidth and frequency of polling. This paper describes a methodology for applying these paradigms to network management system for ATM switches.