Distributed Software Agents for Network Fault Management

Hassan HAJJI  Behrouz Homayoun FAR 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems  Vol.E83-D  No.4  pp.735-746
Publication Date: 2000/04/20
Online ISSN: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8532
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Issue on Knowledge-Based Software Engineering)
Category: Application
Keyword: 
network fault management,  SNMP,  software agents,  Bayesian network, 

Full Text: PDF(1.4MB)

Summary: 
This paper discusses a framework for automating fault management using distributed software agents. The management function is distributed among multiple agents that can carry out advanced reasoning activities on the network domain. Network domain modeling using Bayesian network is introduced. The agent detects, correlates and selectively seeks to derive a clear explanation of the alarms generated in its domain. Depending on the network's degree of automation, the agent can even carry out local recovery actions. The ideas of the paper are implemented in a software for inference in Bayesian network. We identify the potentialities of learning in the agent model, and present the class of problems to be addressed.