Network Agents

Network agents are special programs that accomplish specified tasks by executing commands remotely. Network managers can create and use intelligent agents to execute critical processes, including performance monitoring, fault detection and correction, and asset management. The agent-manager concept is not new. The manager-agent relationship is intrinsic to most standard network-management protocols, including the Simple Network-Management Protocol (SNMP) that is used to manage TCP/IP networks. In fact, SNMP agents are widely available for all kinds of network devices, including bridges, routers, hubs, multiplexers, and switches.

In the SNMP world, agents respond to polls from a management station on the operational status of the various devices on the network. Based on the information that is returned, agents can then be directed by the management station in order to obtain more data, set performance variables, or generate traps when specified events occur. To retrieve the collected data, however, the agents must be polled by central management software a process that increases network traffic. On WANs, which are being increasingly burdened with multimedia and other delay-sensitive applications, traffic from continuous polling and the resulting data transfers can degrade network performance. So-called intelligent agents address this problem.

What makes these agents so smart is the addition of programming code that consists of rules that tell them exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. In essence, the intelligent agent plays the dual role of manager and agent. Under this rules-based scheme, polling is localized, events and...