Traffic congestion control in communication networks

Next generation networks are characterized by ever increasing complexity, intelligence, heterogeneous technologies and increasing user expectations. Telecommunication networks in particular have become truly global, consisting of a variety of national and regional networks, both wired and wireless. Consequently, the management of telecommunication networks is becoming increasingly complex. In addition, network security and reliability requirements require additional overheads which increase the size of the data records. This in turn causes acute network traffic congestions. There is no single network management methodology to control the various requirements of today's networks, and provides a good level of Quality of Service (QoS), and network security. Therefore, an integrated approach is needed in which a combination of methodologies can provide solutions and answers to network events (which cause severe congestions and compromise the quality of service and security). The proposed solution focused on a systematic approach to design a network management system based upon the recent advances in the mobile agent technologies. This solution has provided a new traffic management system for telecommunication networks that is capable of (1) reducing the network traffic load (thus reducing traffic congestion), (2) overcoming existing network latency, (3) adapting dynamically to the traffic load of the system, (4) operating in heterogeneous environments with improved security, and (5) having robust and fault tolerance behavior. This solution has solved several key challenges in the development of network management for telecommunication networks using mobile agents. We have designed several types of agents, whose interactions will allow performing some complex management actions, and integrating them. Our solution is decentralized to eliminate excessive bandwidth usage and at the same time has extended the capabilities of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Our solution is fully compatible with the existing standards.