An integrated mobile agent framework for distributed network management

Conventional network management based on simple network management protocol (SNMP) is often run in a centralized manner. The centralized management approach is limited to small-scale networks because it incurs excessive processing load and heavy network traffic in the management station. For scalability, this paper presents a new management framework that integrates mobile agents with the SNMP protocol. The mobile agent technology provides support for distributed network management. The integrated framework allows the network operators to deploy an appropriate management approach according to the characteristics of target networks and the nature of management activities. A quantitative latency model is developed for the mobile agent based approach. We have implemented a prototype of the framework based on an in-house developed Naplet mobile agent docking environment and the AdventNet SNMP package. We have experimented with the system in network interface performance monitoring and fault diagnosis applications. Experimental results demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of centralized and distributed management approaches and the flexibility of the integrated framework and verify the accuracy of the latency model.