Mobile agents for network management: when and when not!

In order to fully realise the potential of mobile agent technology to address the needs of the network management domain, it is imperative to establish the conditions where mobile agent-based (MA) NMS or SNMP-based NMS should be employed to achieve the optimal performance in term of overhead traffic generated. This paper presents mathematical models to approximate the overhead traffic created by the MA-based NMS and SNMP-based NMS on the production network, based on the complexity of the management task involved. Through our analysis and experimentation, we establish that there is range (of the number of nodes involved) wherein it is advantageous to use mobile agents. Furthermore, we demonstrate through our analytical model that this range can be estimated a priori, thereby facilitating a decision on when to deploy mobile agents and when not to.

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