A Hybrid Layered Multiagent Architecture with Low Cost and Low Response Time Communication Protocol for Network Intrusion Detection Systems

Applying multiagent technology to the management of network security is a challenging task since it requires the management on different time instances and has many interactions. This paper aims at utilizing potential benefits from applying distributed multiagent technology to network security. To facilitate information exchange between different agents in our proposed hybrid layered multiagent architecture, a low-cost and low response time agent communication protocol is developed to tackle the issues typically associated with a distributed multiagent system, such as poor system performance, excessive processing power requirement, and long delays. The bandwidth and response time performance of the proposed end-to-end system is investigated through the simulation of the proposed agent communication protocol on our private LAN testbed called Hierarchical Agent Network for Intrusion Detection Systems (HAN-IDS). The simulation results show that our proposed system is efficient and extensible since it consumes negligible bandwidth with low cost and low response time.