Agents of Change in Future Communication Systems

Agent technology in communications systems: an overview

“…This paper will focus mainly on software agents used for the enabling of automated management and control of telecommunications systems, rather than their use as providing`intelligent' interfaces and Internet search type agents. This paper will discuss some of the reasons why distributed software agents can provide the underpinning software technology for current legacy systems and future telecommunications systems (Nwana et al, 1997). For readers interested in a wide variety of applications of agent technology to communications systems, then we refer them to a book entitled Software Agents for Future Communications Systems (Hayzelden and Bigham, 1999).…”

“…The Internet model is based on the concept of inter-working, where the network hardware is viewed as just a transmission platform and all the functionality lies in the software functions residing on the host servers. We and others, including (Sincoskie, 1997;Nwana et al, 1997;GaõÈ ti, 1996) believe that this model will eventually prevail as the enabling communications platform of the future. In later sections we will describe how management solutions from the telecommunications world, coupled with concepts from the Internet and software agent technology could provide a more integrated, easier to automate and more¯exible service enabled communications system.…”