Abstract
The increasing complexity of network architectures and the diverse services operating over them is currently being fuelled greatly by the convergence of telecommunications and data networks. This growth is in itself a driver towards the development of more comprehensive, flexible and scalable management frameworks than those readily available in today’s market such as SNMP, CMIP and Remote Monitoring. Therefore, this paper builds on previous work examining the utility of active processes, or agents, for providing this much needed functionality at the management level. A distributed component architecture is proposed, which allows the construction of agents from component stock. Simulated network devices are embedded with agent execution ‘kernels and populated with standard agents to manage device registration, configuration, security and other operations. Also, the issue of security is addressed through the development of an encryption key exchange scheme between agents and their device hosts to create a ‘web of trust’ amongst participating entities.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Appelby, S., Steward, S., ‘Mobile Software Agents for Control in Telecommunications Networks’ BT TechJ., Vo1.12, No.2, (1994).
Schoonderwoerd, R., Holland, O.E., Bruten, J.L., ‘Ant-like agents for load balancing in telecommunications networks’, First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, ACM Press, (1997).
Magedanz, T., Rothermel, K., Karuse, S., ‘Intelligent Agents: An Emerging technology for Next Generation Telecommunications ?’, Infocom’96, San Francisco, CA (1996).
Rizzo, M., Utting, LA., ‘An Agent-based Model for the Provision of Advanced Telecommunication Services’, Proc. of the 5th Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture (TINA) Workshop, Melbourne, Australia, pp 205-218, (1995).
Gavalas, D., Greenwood, D., Ghanbari, M., O’Mahony, M., ‘An Infrastructure for Distributed and Dynamic Network Management based on Mobile Agent Technology’, IEEE Int. Conference on Communications (ICC’99), Vancouver, (1999).
Susilo, G., Bieszczad, A. and Pagurek, B., ‘Infrastructure for Advanced Network Management based on Mobile Code’, Proceedings of the IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS’98), New Orleans (1998) 322-333.
Ku, H., Luderer, G., Subbiah, B., ‘An Intelligent Mobile Agent Framework for Distributed Network Management’, Proc. IEEE Globecom’97, Phoenix AZ (1997) 160-164.
Chess, D. M., ‘Security Issues in Mobile Code Systems’, Giovanni Vigna (Ed.): Mobile Agents and Security, Springer-Verlag, (1998), 1-14.
Gray, R., ‘Mobile Agent Security’, Proceedings of the ECOOP Workshop on Distributed Object Security and 4th Workshop on Mobile Object Systems: Secure Internet Mobile Computations, (1998), 79-80.
Weihmayer, R., Velthuijsen, H., ‘Distributed AI and Co-operative Systems for Telecommunications’, Worldwide Intelligent Systems: AI Approaches to Telecommunications and Network Management, J. Liebowitz, D. Prereau. (Eds.), IOS Press, Amsterdam, (1994), 227-260.
Matthes, F., ‘Mobile Processes in Cooperative Information Systems.’, Proceedings STJA’97, Erfurt, Germany, Springer-Verlag, (1997).
Kohl, J., Neuman, B., ‘The Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5). Internet RFC 1510, (1993).
The OMG CORBA Component Model, http://www.omg.orgltechprocess/meetings/schedule/CORBA Component Model R FP.html
McCabe, F. G., Clark, K. L., ‘APRIL: Agent Process Interaction Language.’, Intelligent Agents, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 890, Wooldridge, M. J. and Jennings, N. R., Eds, Springer-Verlag (1995) 324-340.
Fujitsu Labs., Japan: Agent Security Model, http://www.fujitsu.co.jp/hypertext/free/kafka/securitv.html
Finin, T. et. al., ‘KQML as an Agent Communication Language’, 3rd Int. Conf. On Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM‘94), ACM Press, (1994).
FIPA 97 specification - Part 2: Agent communication language, http://www.fipa.org/spec/FIPA97.html
Greenwood, D., Gavalas, D., ‘Using Active Processes as the Basis for an Integrated Distributed Network Management Architecture’, Internationl Workshop on Active Networks (IWAN ’99), Berlin, (1999).
Chiariglione, L. ‘FIPA: A General Overview’, http://drogo.cselt.stetit/fipa/ - Papers
Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W.A., ‘Neighbor Discovery for IP Version 6 (IPv6)’, IETF, http://www.ietf.org/internet -drafts/draft-ietf ipngwg-discovery-v203. txt
Case J., Fedor M., Schoffstall M., Davin J., ‘A Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)’, RFC 1157, DDN Network Information Center, SRI International (1990).
Gavalas, D., Greenwood, D., Ghanbari, M., O’Mahony, M., ‘Enabling Mobile Agent Technology for Intelligent Bulk Management Data Filtering’, IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS), Honolulu, (2000).
SUN website, Frequently Asked Questions section - Applet Security, http://java.sun.com/sfag/index.html
Zimmerman, P.R., ‘The Official POP User’s Guide’, MIT Press, (1995).
Public Key Cryptography: http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/pub105.htm
The IDEA Algorithm: http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/co0404.htm
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this paper
Cite this paper
Greenwood, D.P.A. (2000). A Cohesive, Secure Mechanism for Structuring Distributed Agent Populations in Managed Networks. In: Hariri, S., Lee, C.A., Raghavendra, C.S. (eds) Active Middleware Services. The Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science, vol 583. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8648-1_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8648-1_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-4657-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-8648-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive