QoS routing for MPLS networks employing mobile agents

The implementation of new networking technologies, such as multiprotocol label switching and differentiated services, will introduce powerful features to the near-future Internet backbone, making a significant contribution to the overall end-to-end provision of quality of service. However, to achieve such an improvement these technologies require not only effective support from current routing algorithms, but also enhanced capabilities, which are currently being developed. To contribute to this development, a novel and powerful scheme is introduced in this article that provides a means of supporting QoS routing through the use of mobile software agents. Specifically, we describe the use of mobile agents to efficiently realize multipoint-to-point routing trees by means of the Wave paradigm, while satisfying the QoS requirements of the set of traffic streams involved in the process. Both benefits and important issues to be considered when using mobile agent schemes in QoS routing are further stressed.