Hybrid network management paradigm

Due to the growing complexity of computer networks, more sophisticated management strategies are required for adequate efficiency and reliability. The drawbacks of centralized network management (NM), characterized by a low degree of flexibility, scalability, efficiency and reliability, are clear. It is widely recognized that mobile agent (MA) approaches have many advantages in dealing with these problems by constructing a distributed computing environment. However, using MAs alone on trivial things might cause an unnecessary transmission overhead. We propose a hybrid hierarchical NM paradigm integrating centralized SNMP (simple network management protocol) and MAs