Abstract: | The mobile agent technology can be employed effectively for the decentralized management of complex networks. We show how the integration of mobile agent with legacy management protocol, such as simple network management protocol (SNMP), leads to decentralized management architecture. HostWatcher is a framework that allows mobile agents to roam network, collect and process data, and perform certain adaptive actions. A prototype system is built and a quantitative analysis underlines the benefits in respect to reducing network load. |