IP network topology discovery for large and multi subnet using mobile “service” agents

With advancement in networking technologies and remarkable increase in the growth of IP networks, need of efficient management become essential part for network administrator. Without an intelligent, automated and self-learning management tool, it will become increasingly difficult to manage such a large network. Earlier techniques rely heavily on SNMP-MIB information or utilize ICMP-echo request/reply, DNS, trace route to carry out network discovery. Algorithm we have developed determines the IP ranges of devices, which are likely to be, discovered so reducing the query to IP ranges. It only requires SNMP agent enabled on routers and switches. We propose to have one mobile agent in each subnet to discover topology of that subnet. Parallel working of agents reduces discovery time than one agent discovering whole network. An added advantage is discovery load gets distributed on multiple agents. The experimental results validate our approach that results of the mobile agent approach were more efficient than single agent approach.