2011 Volume 17 Issue 1 Pages 19-37
The focus of our work is the elicitation of communication network systems’ knowledge resources in a generic and reusable manner for providing the automated support to network management tasks. Key features of the proposed knowledge model are: ontological representation of static domain-content and management-expertise encoded as the core knowledge of distributed multi-agent architecture. Our emphasis has primarily been on the modularization of resource knowledge to facilitate its reuse in a flexible manner. To demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed scheme, we have implemented an experimental network in our laboratory, and the devised knowledge model has been deployed through multi-agent based middleware layer in the prototype system. A couple of application scenarios have been designed for testing with the prototype system. Experimental results confirm a marked reduction in the workloads of the network operator with our system providing the automated support to network management functions. Validation of the reusability/modifiability aspects of our system illustrates the flexible manipulation of knowledge fragments within diverse application contexts. We envisage our knowledge modeling approach as the first step towards the comprehensive knowledge acquisition, representation, and dissemination in the communication network management domain.
