Results of the CEO Project - WWW Management

This report contains the result of a ‘proof of concept’ study that was performed by the CTIT of the University of Twente, together with ESYS Limited (Guildford, UK) for the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the EC (Ispra, Italy). The study is part of the ‘Centre of Earth Observation’ (CEO) programme. The subject of the study was the design and implementation of tools that allow status and utilisation monitoring of networks and distributed information servers. In the specific case of the CEO programme, these information servers are accessible via the WWW and contain large amounts of earth observation data (e.g. satellite pictures). The work division within the project was that ESYS investigated the management applications, which had to run on top of HP-Openview, and the CTIT designed and implemented the management agents. These agents had to include the following Management Information Bases (MIBs): • A HTTP-MIB, with detailed information concerning the WWW document transfer protocol. • A Retrieval Service (RS) MIB, with high level information concerning the WWW document transfer service. • An Information Store (IS) MIB, with information concerning the WWW server and the documents provided by that server. The specifications of these MIBs were presented to the IETF and provided a good starting point for subsequent standardization activities. The agents were implemented as sub-agents of the EMANATE extensible agent package and are currently being tested in a number of field trials

Administração e gerência de redes de computadores

With the computers networks growing in complexity, the network monitoring tools usage becomes more and more necessary. This monograph presents case studies where the importance of using network monitoring tools, like Nagios, Cacti and BigBrother, is shown in order to avoid excessive time and resources demand on managing networks. Enhancing substantially the administrator work quality standard, allowing him having a precise and centralized vision of all important network elements.Com a crescente complexidade das redes de computadores, a utilização de sistemas de gerenciamento de redes torna-se cada vez mais indispensável. Esta monografia apresenta estudos de caso onde é mostrada a importância da utilização de ferramentas de gerenciamento de redes, como o Nagios, o Cacti e o BigBrother, a fim de evitar o consumo excessivo de tempo e recursos para esta tarefa, elevando significativamente o padrão de qualidade do trabalho do administrador, permitindo-o ter uma visão precisa e centralizada de todos os elementos importantes da rede

Uma MIB para aplicações Internet

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro TecnologicoEste trabalho trata do gerenciamento de aplicações cliente de rede da arquitetura de redes Internet. Para isso, é proposta uma extensão à MIB-II padrão da Arquitetura de Gerenciamento de Redes Internet. O objetivo desta nova MIB é oferecer informações que permitam monitorar e controlar aplicações de rede Internet em estações clientes de rede. Para a construção do módulo da MIB proposta, vários aspectos são discutidos, estabelecendo uma metodologia para o desenvolvimento de novas MIBs SNMP. Em seguida, esta metodologia é utilizada para especificar o módulo de MIB para o gerenciamento de aplicações Internet. Algumas alternativas para a implementação de um agente SNMP para esta nova MIB são discutidos. O módulo de MIB especificado passa por uma etapa de verificação, através da utilização de um compilador de MIBs. Por fim são apresentadas as possibilidades de utilização do novo agente em um ambiente de redes típico, além dos resultados obtidos no ambiente de testes

PA-163 : diseño y validación de un middleware basado en protocolos de gestión de red orientado a la integración de las transmisiones de dispositivos de rastreo con aplicativos existentes para el monitoreo de redes

El rastreo satelital de vehículos hace uso intensivo de hardware especializado para la obtención y transmisión de datos de ubicación. Este hardware embebido para localización de vehículos (AVL) se caracteriza por tener un alto nivel de heterogeneidad en la mayoría de sus componentes tecnológicos, incluyendo sensores, protocolos de transmisión de datos, codificación de la información y mecanismos de diagnóstico. Estas condiciones dificultan la integración y estandarización de dichos dispositivos en plataformas de software que estén diseñadas para operar bajo protocolos estándares, por lo que se terminan creando sistemas de información aislados con pocas opciones de estandarización e interoperabilidad. A nivel de negocio, estas condiciones impactan negativamente procesos operativos como la atención de fallos, el diagnóstico del estado interno de los dispositivos y la toma de decisiones para los procesos correctivos. En este trabajo de grado se describe el desarrollo de un middleware basado en agentes y protocolos de gestión de red que tiene como objetivo de aplicación, el uso de sistemas de administración de red (NMS) para el monitoreo de dispositivos heterogéneos de AVL. Esta solución se caracteriza por fundamentarse en conceptos de varias áreas de la informática como los sistemas multi-agentes que permiten el diseño de comportamientos autónomos necesarios para interactuar con los dispositivos físicos y facilitan la escalabilidad a través de una plataforma distribuida, los protocolos de gestión de red en donde se ha seleccionado SNMP, que a través de un conjunto de operaciones simples y una definición de objetos administrados, brinda una interfaz para conectar los sistemas de administración de redes con los dispositivos con protocolos propietarios de comunicaciones y finalmente el Internet de las cosas (IoT) del cual se extrajeron conceptos para integración de hardware heterogéneo. En la validación del middleware propuesto se ha contado con el apoyo de la empresa ULTRA S.A. quien ha provisto un ambiente de producción con el fin de contar con las condiciones real de comportamiento de los dispositivos en términos de concurrencia en el envío de datos, intermitencia de conexiones y cambios en las variables monitoreadas, probando de esta forma que mediante este middleware, las plataformas actuales para el rastreo de vehículos podrán unificar las tecnologías y mecanismos de diagnóstico del hardware involucrado, reduciendo la complejidad para efectuar el monitoreo de las variables y mejorando la toma de decisiones a nivel operativo dada la mayor cantidad de información presente y la disponibilidad de herramientas administrativas para la gestión de recursos físicos, usuarios y alarmas del sistema.Satellite tracking of vehicles uses specialized hardware for obtaining and transmitting location data. This embedded hardware for automatic vehicle location (AVL) is characterized for incor-porating internal components with high level of heterogeneity, including sensors, data trans-mission protocols, information codification and diagnostic mechanisms. These conditions make difficult to have and standard way to integrate these devices in software platforms that are designed to operate with standard protocols, and they end up creating isolated information systems with few options in standardization and interoperability. At business level, these con-ditions generate negative impacts in operative processes like fault attention, device s internal status diagnostic and decision making for corrective processes. This document describes the development of an agent based middleware with network man-agement protocols that allows the usage of network management systems (NMS) for perform monitoring of heterogenous AVL devices. The solution presented here is characterized by be-ing based in several computing areas, like multi-agent systems that allows the design of auton-omous behaviors needed for interact with physical devices and make easier scalability through a distributed platform, network management protocols where SNMP has been selected for hav-ing defined simple operations and a managed object definition that gives an interface to connect network management systems with devices that have proprietary communication protocols and finally the Internet Of Things (IoT) where concepts were obtained to integrate heterogenous hardware. For middleware validation, the company ULTRA S.A. has supported a computing production environment that brings real operation conditions of devices in features like data transmission concurrency, connection intermittence and real variables changing, probing that by using this middleware, current vehicle tracking platforms could unify technology and mechanism for di-agnosing involved hardware, reducing complexity for variable monitoring and enhancing de-cision making at operative level based of the bigger amount of accessible information and the availability of administrative tools for management of physical resources, users and systems alarms.Magíster en Ingeniería de Sistemas y ComputaciónMaestrí

The development of a discovery and control environment for networked audio devices based on a study of current audio control protocols

This dissertation develops a standard device model for networked audio devices and introduces a novel discovery and control environment that uses the developed device model. The proposed standard device model is derived from a study of current audio control protocols. Both the functional capabilities and design principles of audio control protocols are investigated with an emphasis on Open Sound Control, SNMP and IEC-62379, AES64, CopperLan and UPnP. An abstract model of networked audio devices is developed, and the model is implemented in each of the previously mentioned control protocols. This model is also used within a novel discovery and control environment designed around a distributed associative memory termed an object space. This environment challenges the accepted notions of the functionality provided by a control protocol. The study concludes by comparing the salient features of the different control protocols encountered in this study. Different approaches to control protocol design are considered, and several design heuristics for control protocols are proposed

A new model for developing capacity expansion strategies

Nove širokopojasne tehnologije i stalno rastući obim saobraćaja imaju veliki uticaj na upravljanje infrastrukturnim kapacitetima telekomunikacione mreže. Efikasno planiranje mrežnih resursa nije moguće realizovati bez primene pouzdanih modela za prognoziranje tražnje, kao i precizno odabranih veličina za karakterizaciju saobraćaja. U tom smislu, osnovni predmet istraživanja ove doktorske disertacije su strategije proširenja mrežnih resursa, koje se oslanjaju na primenu različitih metoda planiranja telekomunikacionih mreža, sa ciljem određivanja optimalnog vremena za realizaciju proširenja. Predloženi modeli proširenja resursa mreže baziraju se na optimizaciji perioda proširenja resursa mreže uz minimizaciju troškova zagušenja i troškova neophodne opreme, pri čemu se ulazni podaci oslanjaju na prognozirane vrednosti tražnje na telekomunikacionom tržištu. Mogućnosti primene različitih metoda planiranja, u kontekstu strategije proširenja mrežnih resursa, razmatrane su na hipotetičkoj WDM mreži, sa koegzistencijom fiksnih i fleksibilnih grid tehnologija. U disertaciji su razmatrani suprotstavljeni zahtevi investicionih ulaganja u cilju brzog povraćaja uloženih sredstava i kvaliteta opsluživanja korisnika. Kompromisno rešenje predstavlja i novi pristup, predložen u disertaciji, koji se odnosi na izbor parametara za karakterizaciju mrežnog saobraćaja, sa ciljem smanjenja uticaja neizvesnosti prognoziranih podataka na odluku o proširenju kapaciteta. U tom smislu, izvršena je analiza, na osnovu koje je utvrđeno da se, poređenjem vrednosti nivoa penala funkcije troškova zagušenja, sa jedne strane i vrednosti parametra Verovatnoće blokiranja kapaciteta, sa druge, može odrediti optimalni vremenski period za sprovođenje odluke o migraciji tehnologija, u posmatranom slučaju. Među najvažnijim naučnim doprinosima disertacije, mogu se izdvojiti implementacija prognoziranih vrednosti saobraćajnih zahteva, zasnovana na primeni teorije difuzionih modela, novi optimizacioni model, kao modifikacija modela strategije serijskog proširenja kapaciteta mrežnog linka, u kojem se uvodi mogućnost prelaska na novu tehnologiju, kao i novi pristup za smanjenje uticaja neizvesnosti prognoziranih podataka na određenu odluku o proširenju kapaciteta, zasnovan na izboru parametara za karakterizaciju mrežnog saobraćaja.New broadband services and ever-increasing Internet traffic volumes have a major influence on the backbone infrastructure capacity management, raising the importance of efficient planning of network resources, based on demand forecast and the appropriate selection of traffic characterization parameters, as well. Therefore, the main subject of the research, presented in the doctoral thesis are the network resources expansion strategies, with respect of different telecommunication network planning methods. Relaying on the forecasted demand in the telecommunications market, the proposed models are used in order to determine the optimal times for network capacity expansion and the technology migration, by minimizing the equipment and congestion costs. Application of different planning methods, in the context of the network resource expansion strategies, has been considered within the hypothetical WDM network, with the coexistence of fixed and flexible grid technologies. Having in mind the contrast between network performance improvement and the investors’ interest for the longer operation of already built-in technologies, a novel approach has been proposed in order to determine the appropriate time for making the technology migration. In this sense, the traffic characterization parameters (the Penalty function and the Bandwidth Blocking Ratio) were used. The main innovative aspect of the approach proposed in the thesis considers the combination of these two metrics in order to decrease uncertainty of the forecasted demands. The other important scientific contributions of the dissertation are the traffic demand forecasting approach based on the diffusion model theory, as well as the novel multiperiod network capacity expansion model, which introduces the option of the migration to the new technology

Modelo de arquitectura para gestión cooperativa de sistemas y servicios distribuidos basado en agentes autónomos

La creciente complejidad, heterogeneidad y dinamismo inherente a las redes de telecomunicaciones, los sistemas distribuidos y los servicios avanzados de información y comunicación emergentes, así como el incremento de su criticidad e importancia estratégica, requieren la adopción de tecnologías cada vez más sofisticadas para su gestión, su coordinación y su integración por parte de los operadores de red, los proveedores de servicio y las empresas, como usuarios finales de los mismos, con el fin de garantizar niveles adecuados de funcionalidad, rendimiento y fiabilidad. Las estrategias de gestión adoptadas tradicionalmente adolecen de seguir modelos excesivamente estáticos y centralizados, con un elevado componente de supervisión y difícilmente escalables. La acuciante necesidad por flexibilizar esta gestión y hacerla a la vez más escalable y robusta, ha provocado en los últimos años un considerable interés por desarrollar nuevos paradigmas basados en modelos jerárquicos y distribuidos, como evolución natural de los primeros modelos jerárquicos débilmente distribuidos que sucedieron al paradigma centralizado. Se crean así nuevos modelos como son los basados en Gestión por Delegación, en el paradigma de código móvil, en las tecnologías de objetos distribuidos y en los servicios web. Estas alternativas se han mostrado enormemente robustas, flexibles y escalables frente a las estrategias tradicionales de gestión, pero continúan sin resolver aún muchos problemas. Las líneas actuales de investigación parten del hecho de que muchos problemas de robustez, escalabilidad y flexibilidad continúan sin ser resueltos por el paradigma jerárquico-distribuido, y abogan por la migración hacia un paradigma cooperativo fuertemente distribuido. Estas líneas tienen su germen en la Inteligencia Artificial Distribuida (DAI) y, más concretamente, en el paradigma de agentes autónomos y en los Sistemas Multi-agente (MAS). Todas ellas se perfilan en torno a un conjunto de objetivos que pueden resumirse en alcanzar un mayor grado de autonomía en la funcionalidad de la gestión y una mayor capacidad de autoconfiguración que resuelva los problemas de escalabilidad y la necesidad de supervisión presentes en los sistemas actuales, evolucionar hacia técnicas de control fuertemente distribuido y cooperativo guiado por la meta y dotar de una mayor riqueza semántica a los modelos de información. Cada vez más investigadores están empezando a utilizar agentes para la gestión de redes y sistemas distribuidos. Sin embargo, los límites establecidos en sus trabajos entre agentes móviles (que siguen el paradigma de código móvil) y agentes autónomos (que realmente siguen el paradigma cooperativo) resultan difusos. Muchos de estos trabajos se centran en la utilización de agentes móviles, lo cual, al igual que ocurría con las técnicas de código móvil comentadas anteriormente, les permite dotar de un mayor componente dinámico al concepto tradicional de Gestión por Delegación. Con ello se consigue flexibilizar la gestión, distribuir la lógica de gestión cerca de los datos y distribuir el control. Sin embargo se permanece en el paradigma jerárquico distribuido. Si bien continúa sin definirse aún una arquitectura de gestión fiel al paradigma cooperativo fuertemente distribuido, estas líneas de investigación han puesto de manifiesto serios problemas de adecuación en los modelos de información, comunicación y organizativo de las arquitecturas de gestión existentes. En este contexto, la tesis presenta un modelo de arquitectura para gestión holónica de sistemas y servicios distribuidos mediante sociedades de agentes autónomos, cuyos objetivos fundamentales son el incremento del grado de automatización asociado a las tareas de gestión, el aumento de la escalabilidad de las soluciones de gestión, soporte para delegación tanto por dominios como por macro-tareas, y un alto grado de interoperabilidad en entornos abiertos. A partir de estos objetivos se ha desarrollado un modelo de información formal de tipo semántico, basado en lógica descriptiva que permite un mayor grado de automatización en la gestión en base a la utilización de agentes autónomos racionales, capaces de razonar, inferir e integrar de forma dinámica conocimiento y servicios conceptualizados mediante el modelo CIM y formalizados a nivel semántico mediante lógica descriptiva. El modelo de información incluye además un “mapping” a nivel de meta-modelo de CIM al lenguaje de especificación de ontologías OWL, que supone un significativo avance en el área de la representación y el intercambio basado en XML de modelos y meta-información. A nivel de interacción, el modelo aporta un lenguaje de especificación formal de conversaciones entre agentes basado en la teoría de actos ilocucionales y aporta una semántica operacional para dicho lenguaje que facilita la labor de verificación de propiedades formales asociadas al protocolo de interacción. Se ha desarrollado también un modelo de organización holónico y orientado a roles cuyas principales características están alineadas con las demandadas por los servicios distribuidos emergentes e incluyen la ausencia de control central, capacidades de reestructuración dinámica, capacidades de cooperación, y facilidades de adaptación a diferentes culturas organizativas. El modelo incluye un submodelo normativo adecuado al carácter autónomo de los holones de gestión y basado en las lógicas modales deontológica y de acción.---ABSTRACT---The growing complexity, heterogeneity and dynamism inherent in telecommunications networks, distributed systems and the emerging advanced information and communication services, as well as their increased criticality and strategic importance, calls for the adoption of increasingly more sophisticated technologies for their management, coordination and integration by network operators, service providers and end-user companies to assure adequate levels of functionality, performance and reliability. The management strategies adopted traditionally follow models that are too static and centralised, have a high supervision component and are difficult to scale. The pressing need to flexibilise management and, at the same time, make it more scalable and robust recently led to a lot of interest in developing new paradigms based on hierarchical and distributed models, as a natural evolution from the first weakly distributed hierarchical models that succeeded the centralised paradigm. Thus new models based on management by delegation, the mobile code paradigm, distributed objects and web services came into being. These alternatives have turned out to be enormously robust, flexible and scalable as compared with the traditional management strategies. However, many problems still remain to be solved. Current research lines assume that the distributed hierarchical paradigm has as yet failed to solve many of the problems related to robustness, scalability and flexibility and advocate migration towards a strongly distributed cooperative paradigm. These lines of research were spawned by Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and, specifically, the autonomous agent paradigm and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). They all revolve around a series of objectives, which can be summarised as achieving greater management functionality autonomy and a greater self-configuration capability, which solves the problems of scalability and the need for supervision that plague current systems, evolving towards strongly distributed and goal-driven cooperative control techniques and semantically enhancing information models. More and more researchers are starting to use agents for network and distributed systems management. However, the boundaries established in their work between mobile agents (that follow the mobile code paradigm) and autonomous agents (that really follow the cooperative paradigm) are fuzzy. Many of these approximations focus on the use of mobile agents, which, as was the case with the above-mentioned mobile code techniques, means that they can inject more dynamism into the traditional concept of management by delegation. Accordingly, they are able to flexibilise management, distribute management logic about data and distribute control. However, they remain within the distributed hierarchical paradigm. While a management architecture faithful to the strongly distributed cooperative paradigm has yet to be defined, these lines of research have revealed that the information, communication and organisation models of existing management architectures are far from adequate. In this context, this dissertation presents an architectural model for the holonic management of distributed systems and services through autonomous agent societies. The main objectives of this model are to raise the level of management task automation, increase the scalability of management solutions, provide support for delegation by both domains and macro-tasks and achieve a high level of interoperability in open environments. Bearing in mind these objectives, a descriptive logic-based formal semantic information model has been developed, which increases management automation by using rational autonomous agents capable of reasoning, inferring and dynamically integrating knowledge and services conceptualised by means of the CIM model and formalised at the semantic level by means of descriptive logic. The information model also includes a mapping, at the CIM metamodel level, to the OWL ontology specification language, which amounts to a significant advance in the field of XML-based model and metainformation representation and exchange. At the interaction level, the model introduces a formal specification language (ACSL) of conversations between agents based on speech act theory and contributes an operational semantics for this language that eases the task of verifying formal properties associated with the interaction protocol. A role-oriented holonic organisational model has also been developed, whose main features meet the requirements demanded by emerging distributed services, including no centralised control, dynamic restructuring capabilities, cooperative skills and facilities for adaptation to different organisational cultures. The model includes a normative submodel adapted to management holon autonomy and based on the deontic and action modal logics