Title: An analytical framework for the modelling and evaluation of the mobile agent based distributed network management paradigm

Authors: Jian Ye, Symeon Papavassiliou

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark, NJ 07102-1982, USA. ' Network Management and Optimal Design Lab, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Zografou, Athens, 157 73, Greece

Abstract: The new emerging technology of Mobile Agents (MAs) has arisen in the distributed programming field as a potential flexible way of managing resources of a distributed system. In this paper a generic framework that can be used for the evaluation and analysis of the performance and tradeoffs of the MA management paradigm is introduced. One key principle of the proposed framework, is that it provides a common paradigm that can accommodate both one-time and periodic management tasks. We illustrate how the developed analytical framework can be used to quantitatively evaluate the performances and tradeoffs in different computing paradigms, by comparing the performances of the MA based paradigm with the corresponding ones of the Client-Server (CS) mode under different scenarios. We also discuss how different MA dissemination strategies could affect the performances of the mobile agent based network management approach.

Keywords: network management; mobile agents; distributed management architecture; modelling; performance evaluation; multi-agent systems; agent-based systems; distributed programming.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPCN.2008.022303

International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 2008 Vol.5 No.4, pp.273 - 284

Published online: 27 Dec 2008 *

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