Dynamic configuration management using mobile intelligent agents

Abstract

With the increasing complexity of Aircraft Data Network the need for configuration management has become a necessity as the tolerance level is absolutely minimal. It is also known that most of the network faults are due to invalid configurations on the network devices. As fault detection plays a vital role in detecting invalid configurations, configuration management forms its basis. The aim of network configuration management is to supervise the network information so that the changes on networks can be tracked and managed. Also the topology of network can be better understood with each device’s configured parameters (interface settings, routing protocols etc). With the existing web based framework for Aircraft Data Network, we could use it for configuration management by adding a few more modules. The reason for using web based is that it can be controlled remotely and its ease of use. And also our web based architecture uses secure protocols and a centralized database. Mobile agents are used to carry the necessary data to configure the nodes in the network. The suggested framework would reduce the complexity of network configuration as well as improve the performance with reduced network time-delays and information bottlenecks.