Autonomic configuration and recovery in a mobile agent-based distributed event monitoring system

In this paper we present a framework for building policy-based autonomic distributed agent systems. The autonomic mechanisms of configuration and recovery are supported through a distributed event processing model and a set of policy enforcement mechanisms embedded in an agent framework. Policies are event-driven rules derived from the system’s functional and non-functional requirements. Agents in the network monitor the system state for policy violation conditions, generate appropriate events, and communicate them to other agents for cooperative filtering, aggregation, and handling. A set of agents perform policy enforcement actions whenever events signifying any policy violation conditions occur. Policies are defined using a specification framework based on XML. The policy enforcement agents interpret the policies given in XML. We illustrate the utility of this framework in the context of an agent-based distributed network monitoring application. We also present an experimental evaluation of our approach. Copyright c © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.