Customer-based IP Service Monitoring with Mobile Software Agents

Presenting mobile software agents for Internet servic monitoring, this research monograph discusses newly standardized Internet technologies that allow service providers to offer secured Internet services with quality guarantees. Yet, today the customers of such services have no independent tool to verify (monitor) the service quality. This book shows why mobile software agents are best fit to fill the gap. The book is addressed to mobile agent researchers looking for new and fruitful application areas. It will also be a valuable resource for innovative Internet providers who are looking for a service monitoring infrastructure going beyond monthly reports.

Contenu

1 Introduction.- 1.1 Overall Scenario.- 1.2 Advanced IP Network Services.- 1.2.1 Internet-based Virtual Private Network (VPN).- 1.2.2 The Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol.- 1.2.3 Differentiated Services (DiffServ).- 1.3 Agent Technology.- 1.4 Network and Service Management.- 1.5 The Problem and the Proposed Approach.- 1.6 Outline of the Book.- 2 A Service Monitoring Architecture.- 2.1 Introduction and Motivation.- 2.2 Mobility and Service Monitoring.- 2.2.1 Terminology.- 2.2.2 Advantages of Service Monitoring with Mobile Agents.- 2.3 The Basic Infrastructure.- 2.3.1 Location of the Control Points.- 2.3.2 Node Architecture.- 2.3.3 Authorization and Filtering.- 2.3.4 Security Issues.- 2.4 Mobility Models and Agent Forwarding.- 2.4.1 Supported Mobility Models.- 2.4.2 Forwarding Security.- 2.5 Internet Deployment.- 2.5.1 Advanced Infrastructure Support.- 3 Implementation of CSM.- 3.1 The CSM Protocol.- 3.1.1 Overview.- 3.1.2 Internet Communication with Java.- 3.1.3 Layering of the CSM Protocol.- 3.1.4 The Protocol Object.- 3.1.5 Message Objects.- 3.1.6 CSM Message Exchange Sequences.- 3.2 The T-Component and the Raw Packet Protocol.- 3.2.1 T-Component Implementations.- 3.2.2 The Interaction between the Node and the T-component.- 3.2.3 Other Options for T-components.- 3.3 The CSM Node.- 3.3.1 Node Overview.- 3.3.2 Welcome Procedure for an Agent.- 3.3.3 The Execution Environment.- 3.3.4 Node Services.- 3.3.5 User Profiles and Policies.- 3.4 Agent Interface.- 3.5 Security and Resource Control.- 3.5.1 Communication Protection.- 3.5.2 Security Layers of the Node.- 3.5.3 Resource Control.- 3.5.4 Agent Security.- 3.6 The Home Application.- 3.6.1 Implementation Overview.- 3.6.2 The Transmission of a Request to the Node.- 3.6.3 The Callback Displayer.- 3.6.4 Generic Views of the Agent Results.- 3.7 CSM Internetworking Support.- 3.7.1 Name and Topology Information.- 3.7.2 Routing.- 3.8 Organization of the Source Code.- 4 Applications of Service Monitoring Agents.- 4.1 Monitoring a Virtual Private Network Service.- 4.1.1 Functionality of a VPN Control Agent.- 4.1.2 Statistical Tests on Cryptographic Algorithms.- 4.2 Service Level Agreement Monitoring.- 4.3 Agents for Measuring QoS Parameters.- 4.3.1 Throughput Measurements.- 4.3.2 Coordination of Distributed Measurements.- 4.3.3 One-Way Delay Measurements.- 4.3.4 The Ping Measurements.- 4.4 Agent Security.- 4.4.1 Classification of Attacks.- 4.4.2 The Semantics of the Agent.- 4.4.3 Attacks on the Input of the Agent.- 4.4.4 Evaluation of the Threat Situation.- 4.5 Extended Application Scenarios.- 4.5.1 Further Applications Independent of New Node Services.- 4.5.2 Future CSM Extensions.- 5 Performance Evaluation.- 5.1 Performance of the Node Environment.- 5.1.1 Throughput of the Execution Environment.- 5.1.2 Node Throughput Including the TCP Receiver.- 5.2 Agent Performance.- 5.3 Communication Performance of the CSM System.- 5.4 The T-Component.- 5.5 Discussion and Improvements.- 6 Comparison with Related Work.- 6.1 The Internet2 Initiative and the QBone.- 6.1.1 The QBone.- 6.1.2 QBone Measurements.- 6.1.3 Comparison to our Approach.- 6.2 Network Measurements and Monitoring.- 6.2.1 IP Measurement Methodology.- 6.2.2 The Simple Network Management Architecture.- 6.2.3 Measurement Testbeds.- 6.3 Mobile Agents for Management and Monitoring.- 6.3.1 Network Management with Mobile Agents.- 6.3.2 The Script MIB.- 6.3.3 Network Management with Active Networks.- 6.4 Open Issues.- 6.4.1 Collaboration of Monitoring Agents.- 6.4.2 Routing.- 6.4.3 Artificial Intelligence.- 7 Summary and Conclusion.- List of Figures.- List of Tables.- List of Abbreviations.