APPLICATION OF MOBILE AGENTS IN NETWORK MANAGEMENT
APPLICATION OF MOBILE AGENTS IN NETWORK MANAGEMENT
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Date
2014-07
Authors
ISAH, Hamidu
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Abstract
According to Case et al., (1990) and Pinheiro et al., (1999), the present day ways of
managing network systems as represented by Simple Network Management Protocol
(SNMP) are based on the centralized client-server approach. In this approach, the
central server (manager) retrieves raw management data from all the clients (network
elements) being managed. This raw data is centrally collated and processed by the
server for every management cycle. This is good enough for small, reliable and fast
networks that are particularly localized in nature. In present-day situation where
networks extend across cities, regions, countries, and continents; as well as in mobile
applications where connected links are very slow and expensive, this may lead to
inefficiency in terms of bandwidth utilization, resource wastage, processing bottleneck
on the server, and other problems that could be caused by communication failures
between the server and the clients being managed.
The objective of this work is to demonstrate that a more efficient approach to Network
Management could be achieved by implementing a distributed system through the use
of Mobile Agents (MA). Typically, Biesoczad et al., (1998) and Gavalas et al., (1999)
were among the early researchers who investigated the concept and possibilities of
using Mobile Agents in the management of network components. Using this concept, a
central manager generates software agents and dispatches them with predefined
itinerary and specific network management tasks; visiting each network element to be
managed; retrieving, analyzing, and only returning computed results back to the central
manager from where the agents originated. This way, the central manager does not need
to pull in huge volume of raw management data from the many dispersed network
elements being managed for central processing. This conserves expensive network
vi
bandwidth, relieves the central server of the mundane task of processing raw
management data that could result in processing bottleneck, and ensures that only
computed results get transmitted to the central server for display to the network
administrator.
JAVA Agent Development Environment (JADE) platform was used to develop a
Mobile Agent based network management system. Issues covered by this research
include Status monitoring of network elements, simple network management protocol
table filtering, and Global filtering on a UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund)
network environment that spanned across five cities (Abuja, Bauchi, Enugu, Kaduna,
and Lagos) in Nigeria. MA’s were generated and dispatched by a central server in
Abuja, visiting network elements to be managed in Bauchi, Enugu, and Lagos. In each
case, volume of data in bytes transferred in both directions as well as transit time in
seconds taken by this data were noted. Results were compared with those obtained from
the same experiments conducted using SNMP approach. Final analysis shows that while
performance was slower using MA as compared to SNMP approach, bandwidth
utilization was far much better with MA. Even the slower performance exhibited by MA
was mainly due to the JADE platform used during the implementation stage. Other
studies have shown that better throughput is attainable using other development
platforms. Also covered by this work are some security issues relating to mobile agents
in a networked environment.
Description
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES,
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD
OF A
MASTER DEGREE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE.
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS,
FACULTY OF SCIENCE
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA
NIGERIA
JULY, 2014
Keywords
APPLICATION,, MOBILE,, AGENTS,, NETWORK,, MANAGEMENT.