Integration of mobile agents with JMX

Abstract

The ever increasing size of networks has resulted in a corresponding escalation of administration costs and lengthy deployment cycles. Clearly, more scalable and flexible network management systems are required to replace existing centralized services. This thesis focuses on the integration of mobile agent technology with the JMX management architecture and the SNMP network management framework. As a proof of concept, a prototype, mJMX, has been developed in which mobile agents (Aglets) can be sent to a network host to interact with the local JMX agent, thereby taking advantage of the local communication and management facilities provided by the JMX agent. The prototype provides a JMX implementation of the JMX 1.2 specification and extends the JMX architecture to make the JMX agent accessible to remote management applications via multiple protocols. In particular, a Java RMI connector and a SNMP adaptor allow remote management applications to access the JMX agent directly via Java RMI or the SNMP protocol.