Flexible software agents for the automatic provision of PVCs in ATM networks (short paper)

This paper describes an agent-based approach to the automatic provision of Permanent Virtual Channels (PVC) in ATM networks. The agent framework described fosters exibility and seamless evolution by the deenition of capability skills. Skills are plugged into the agent's brain which is responsible for the coordination of the agent's behavior. The application of this agent framework to the problem of PVC conng-uration resulted in the deenition of a set of skills, among which, only one skill is device-dependent. Therefore, the implemented application can easily support new types of ATM switches. Moreover, it is eecient in terms of performance and bandwidth saving.