MONITORING-AND-SURVEILANCE AGENTS

Monitoring-and-surveillance agents (also called predictive agents) are
intelligent agents that observes and repot on equipment. For example, NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory has an agent that monitors inventory planning and
scheduling equipment ordering to keep cost down. Other monitor agents worked on
the manufacturing shop floor, finding equipment problems and locating other
machinery that will do the same job.

Monitoring-and-surveillance agents are often used to monitor complex computer
networks. Allstate insurance has a network with 2000 computers. The company uses
a monitoring agent from Computer Associate International called Neugent also
watches it’s huge network 24 hours a day. Every 5 seconds, the agent measures
1,200 data points and can predict a system crash 45 minutes before it happens.
Neugent combines intelligent agent technology with neural networks technology to
look for patterns of activity or problems. The neural network part can learn
what conditions predict downturn in network efficiency or a slowing on network
traffic. Neuget also watches for electronic attacks from hackers, detecting them
early so that they can be stopped.

Another type of monitoring-and-surveillance agent that works on computer
networks keeps track of the configuration of each computer connected to the
network. It tracks and updates the central configuration database when anything
on any computer changes, like the number of type of disk drive changes. An
important task in managing networks is in prioritizing traffic and shaping
bandwidth. That means sending enough network capacity of bandwidth to most
important task over those task that are of secondary importance. At university,
for example, processing end-of-semester grades might take precedence over net
surfing.