Research On Security Mechanism In Agent Based Network Management

Due to the restriction of design and its static characteristic, dominant SNMP paradigm lacks of performance, flexibility and scalability. As a result, a number of limitations are exposed in real-world environments, such as bandwidth waste, etc. With the rapid development of network, SNMP has been unable to properly meet the modern network.Agent based Network Management is based on the idea of handling management operations locally where the management data are generated. It has many advantages including:platform irrelevant, network management adaptability, etc. Compared with traditional network management, the use of Agent based Network Management potentially addresses many major areas of limitations including:performance, scalability and functionality. Although the above benefits, applying agent technology to network management may result in a set of challenges, one of them is security.In this paper, aiming at management information protection, agent identity confirmation and security of managed resources, which are part of security issues of Mobile Agent based Network Management, we proposed two security schemes:the Trust Circle based Protection Scheme (TCPS) and the Passport and Visa Based Authentication Scheme (PVBAS). The TCPS provides a security mechanism for protecting the management information over the agent-based network management. The PVBAS offers a mechanism for agent authentication and resource access control.