An agent-based model of a responsive network monitoring system for internet service providers
Abstract
The purpose of this project was to develop a responsive Agent based network monitoring system
designed to reduce the time taken by network administrators to initiate monitoring of network nodes
and making any changes and updates on the monitoring parameters.
Due to development of various technologies that interconnect most of today’s organizations, may
highly rely on the Internet and Intranets for their day to day activities and thus lay a huge reliance
on it. A few hours of network breakdown would incur huge losses to the organization.
The widely used Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is today particularly limiting due
to the client-server centralized and static paradigm. The approach is Ad-hoc, centralized and relies
on a limited set of capabilities at network nodes. In this paradigm, the system does not auto respond
to changes and modifications in the network as hard coding is required to make the necessary
changes.
Our approach used a Multi Agent System (MAS) that provides a solution that works by reducing
the time taken to initiate and make any changes in the monitoring parameters by introducing
intelligence to the system. In this project, we used Prometheus methodology in the system
specification, design and implementation. The Prometheus methodology is a detailed process for
specifying, designing, and implementing intelligent agent systems. Our goal in using the
Prometheus methodology was to have a process with defined deliverables.
The results of the study showed that the MAS system optimizes responsiveness by ensuring changes
done on the database are automatically updated to the agent’s database which makes the relevant
changes on the monitored parameters.