Mobile Agents for Telecommunication Applications

Mobile Agents areat the crossroadsof twomore ancient concepts: agentand mobility. Theconceptofagentappearedinthe?eldofarti?cialintelligence(AI) inthelate1970sandisratherfuzzy,leadingtomanyde?nitions. Anagentis usually de?ned as a software servant that either relieves the user of routine, burdensome tasks such as appointment scheduling and e-mail disposition, or sortstheinformationthatisrelevanttotheuser'scurrentinterestsandneeds. This de?nition has made "agent " a buzzword within both the academic and industrialworlds. Mobileagentsrefertoself-containedandidenti?ablecomputerprogramsthat canmovewithinthenetworkandcanactonbehalfoftheuseroranotherentity. Even if they are de?ned as a special class of agents that have mobility as a secondarycharacteristic,itismoreappropriatetoconsidermobileagentsasthe achievementofmobileabstractions(code,objectsorprocesses). Theyareoften consideredasanalternativeand/oracomplementforotherparadigmssuchas thewell-establishedclient-server. Insteadoftransferringlargeamountsofdata between the client programand the server,a mobile agent movesto the host withthedataandpertinentresources.Mobileagentshavebeenusedinapplicationsrangingfrominformation- trievaltoe-commerce,includingtelecommunicationsandnetworkmanagement. Althoughtheirproponentsassociateseveralbene?tswiththeiruse,theyremain acontentiousissuebecauseof,forinstance,thelackofinnovativeapplications backingtheirclaimswithconcretestudies. Theaimoftheworkshopwastoprovideauniqueopportunityforresearchers, softwareandapplicationdevelopers,andcomputernetworktechnologiststod- cuss new developments on the mobile agent technologyand applications. The workshopfocuses on mobile agent issuesacrossthe areasof networkmana- ment, mobile applications, Nomadic computing, feature interactions, Internet applications,QoSmanagement,policy-basedmanagement,interactivemulti- dia,tele-learningapplications,andcomputertelephonyintegration. August2001 SamuelPierreandRochGlitho Organizing Committee General Chair: SamuelPierre ' EcolePolytechniquedeMontr'eal,Canada Program Chair: RochGlitho EricssonResearchCanada Tutorial Co-Chairs: Jean-CharlesBernard ' EcolePolytechniquedeMontr'eal,Canada WilfriedG. Probst Universit'eduQu'ebec'aMontr'eal,Canada ThomasM.Chen SouthernMethodistUniversity,USA PublicityCo-Chairs: RamiroLiscano MitelCorporation,Canada LarbiEsmahi NationalResearchCouncilofCanada Geng-ShengKuo NationalCentralUniversity,Taiwan AntonioLiotta UniversityofSurrey,UK Local Management Committee ' Jean-CharlesBernard,EcolePolytechniquedeMontr'eal,Canada DenisMonette,EricssonResearchCanada RochGlitho,EricssonResearchCanada ' SabineK'ebreau,EcolePolytechniquedeMontr'eal,Canada RaymondL'evesque,BureaudesCongr'esUniversitaires,Canada VII Program Committee A. L. Ananda,NUS,Singapore ' J. -C. Bernard,EcolePolytechniquedeMontr'eal,Canada A. Bieszczad,LucentTechnologies,USA R. Boutaba,UniversityofWaterloo,Canada J. Delgado,UniversitatPompeuFabra,Barcelona,Spain P. Dini,CiscoSystemsInc. ,USA L. Esmahi,NRC,Canada B. Falchuk,Bellcore,USA N. Fonseca,Unicamp,Brazil V. Gay,UTS,Australia M. -P. Gervais,LIP6,France R. Glitho,EricssonResearchCanada T. Gray,MitelCorp,Canada C. Grossner,NortelNetworks,Canada ' H. H. Hoang,EcolePolytechniquedeMontr'eal,Canada E. Horlait,LIP6,France J. G. Hulaas,UniversityofGeneva,Switzerland R. Impey,NRC,Canada I. Jabbari,GeorgeMasonUniversity,USA P. Joye,UniversityofAppliedSciencesofWesternSwitzerland A.Karmouch,UniversityofOttawa,Canada R. Liscano,MitelCorporation,Canada T. Magedanz,IKV++GMD,Germany C. Petitpierre,SwissFederalInstituteofTechnology,Switzerland ' A. Quintero,EcolePolytechniquedeMontr'eal,Canada S. Soulhi,EricssonCanada J. -F. Wagen,Univ. ofAppliedSciencesofWesternSwitzerland MATAWorkshop SteeringCommittee EricHorlait,LIP6,France RogerImpey,NRC,Canada AhmedKarmouch,UniversityofOttawa,Canada ThomasMagedanz,IKV++GMD,Germany Table of Contents DynamicCongestionAvoidanceUsingMulti-agentSystems ...1 N. Rouhana,E. Horlait UseofAgentsforResolvingFeatureInteractions...