Management Testing and Reconfiguration of IP based networks using Mobile Software Agents

Objective

The main goal of the project is to design, develop, test, validate and provide a set of novel network management applications based on Mobile Agent Technology (MAT) for managing IP based networks and to evaluate MAT in the context of Network Management. More specifically the project will produce three network management applications based on MAT technology:
An application for Configuration and Alarm management of systems for the access network; An application for configuring QoS parameters within an IP based administrative domain and accordingly monitoring/ auditing the delivered QoS. The QoS parameters will be considered part of a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a neighboring domain (customer or ISP); An application for Conformance Testing of network elements and mobile agents as well as for Monitoring signaling and mobile agents internal behavior.
MANTRIP will also deal with other aspects of network management based on mobile agents, namely the performance management of the management network and the scalability of the mobile agent based system. The project trials will consider a mixed networking environment, consisting of systems for the access network, as well as QoS aware IP and IP/ATM devices, enabling the operation of all the developed management applications.

OBJECTIVES
The project has the following main objectives: The specification and requirements analysis for the three Management Applications and Selection of the Mobile Agent Platform; The implementation of individual generic management operations on specific network elements in a vendor-independent way; Implementation of the management applications based on mobile agents (agents Modifying the Status of devices - agents Collecting Management Information - agents Collecting Signaling and State Information and executing conformance tests - reactive Agents responding to triggers/events - proactive agents); The integration of the individual management applications into a network management system (namely the MANTRIP NMS), and their validation on the MANTRIP testbed; Continuous market monitoring and the project alignment to current market trends; Exploitation of the project results between the industrial partners. Dissemination of results, liaison with standardisation bodies, information exchange with forums, active bodies in the MAT area.

Fields of science

• natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware

Programme(s)

• FP5-IST - Programme for research, technological development and demonstration on a "User-friendly information society, 1998-2002"

Topic(s)

• 1.1.2.-4.2.4 - Technologies for network management and service-level interworking

Call for proposal

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (7)