An agent-based network management system

Abstract

This paper describes ongoing research work to build a network management system from autonomous software agents, using the BT Zeus Agent Building Toolkit. The network specific to this work is a 6-Node ATM Testbed, which is fully reconfigurable; however, it is intended that the management system is generic enough to be implemented on different networks. Each node of the network hosts its own agent society; within which the role of each agent has an useful analogy to the controlling of the layers of the ISO OSI reference model. Although the lower-layer agent's actions must be tightly prescribed, it is intended that higher-layer agents will take on more strategic, longerterm outlooks, and be more adaptive and autonomous. Agent societies are able to communicate, to allow their collaboration; it is intended that this will only be at the peer-to-peer level. The long-term aim of this project is to implement fully distributed control within a network, while maintaining the ability to take more holistically informed decisions for network-wide and longer-term strategies.