Specification and selection of network management agents

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework for building a reusable mobile agent from two kinds of components: an itinerary component and an application-specific logic component. Both components are implemented as mobile agents. The former is a carrier of the latter over particular networks and the latter defines management tasks performed at each host independently of any network. This framework also provides a mechanism for matchmaking the two mobile agent-based components. Since the mechanism is formulated based on a process algebra approach, it can strictly select an itinerary component that is suitable to perform management tasks at hosts that the tasks want to visit over networks. A prototype implementation of this framework and its application were constructed on a Java-based mobile agent system. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.