Quality of Service Management in IP Networks Using Mobile Agent Technology

摘要

Telecommunication network infrastructures become more and more distributed and heterogeneous, with various network technologies integrated (e.g. ATM, IP, ADSL), and several types of equipment coexisting, typically from different vendors. At the same time, services are becoming more and more demanding in terms of quality of service. In this context, efficient network management is of paramount importance for network operators. The telecommunication business does not any more depend on the type and cost of the services but mostly on their quality and how quickly they can be introduced. In this context, management platforms should be flexible and intelligent enough to dynamically configure, monitor and eventually reconfigure the network. On one hand, these platforms should be able to inform the clients about the quality of the requested services and on the other hand, network administrators must be able to manage their network resources in order to efficiently provide quality of service. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between network operators / service providers and clients should be honored in a manner absolutely transparent to the users. This paper describes the network management architecture followed by the European IST (Information Society Technology) Project MANTRIP (MANagement, Testing and Reconfiguration of IP based networks using Mobile Software Agents). This architecture is based on both standard and tailored APIs. The prototype developed during the MANTRIP project is described in detail. Its main objective is to manage the Quality of service in IP Networks, with Mobile Agent Technology (MAT) being used to implement the specified APIs in the QoS management system and IP Differentiated Services (DiffServ) being used as a test case.