Mobile Agent-Based Management in the INSERT Project

This paper describes work carried out atUniversity College London to evaluate the use of MobileAgents (MA), written in Java, in network and systemmanagement. The work draws on experience fromconventional management systems based on ISO “CommonManagement Information Protocol” (CMIP) andInternet “Simple Network ManagementProtocol” (SNMP). These systems make use of theconcept of a “Managed Object” (MO). The paper describes the way in which the MOconcept has been translated into a form suitable forMA-based management and how the features of the Javalanguage may be used to express management information and to implement MOs. A platform has beenimplemented which allows MOs to be instantiated,controlled and stored. The platform also allows the easyproduction of MAs, their launching into the system and their subsequent management. Details of theplatform implementation are given and an initialassessment of performance is presented.