Intelligent agent and distributed AI (DAI) approaches attach specific conditions to cooperative exchanges between intelligent systems, that go far beyond simple functional interoperability. Ideally, systems that pursue local or global goals, coordinate their actions, share knowledge, and resolve conflicts during their interactions within groups of similar or dissimilar agents can be viewed as cooperative coarse-grained systems. The infrastructure of telecommunications is a world in transition. There are a number of trends that contribute to this: convergence of traditional telephony and data network worlds, blurring of boundaries between public and private networks, complementary evolution of wireline, wireless, and cable network infrastructures, the emergence of integrated broadband multimedia networks and, of course, the information superhighway. Up to now, despite the effort that has gone into this area, the field of intelligent agents research has not yet led to many fielded systems. Telecommunications applications pose strong requirements to agents such as: reliability, real-time performance, openness, security management and other integrated management, and mobility. In order to fulfil their promise, intelligent agents need to be fully dependable and typically require an integrated set of capabilities. This is the challenge that exists for intelligent agents technology in this application domain.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Intelligent Agents for Telecommunication Applications, IATA'98, held in Paris, France, in July 1998, in conjunction with the 1998 Agents World Conference. The book presents 17 revised full papers carefully selected for inclusion in the volume. The book is divided into topical sections on network architecture, network configuration and planning, network optimization, network management, agent-based architectures for service applications.

The first book to provide an integrative presentation of the issues, challenges and success of designing, building and using agent applications. The chapters presented are written by internationally leading authorities in the field, with a general audience in mind. The result is a unique overview of agent technology applications, ranging from an introduction to the technical foundations to reports on dealing with specific agent systems in practice.

Telecommunications has evolved and grown at an explosive rate in recent years and will undoubtedly continue to do so. As its functions, applications, and technology grow, it becomes increasingly complex and difficult, if not impossible, to meet the demands of a global network using conventional computing technologies. Computational intelligence (CI) is the technology of the future-and the future is now. Computational Intelligence in Telecommunications Networks offers an in-depth look at the rapid progress of CI technology and shows its importance in solving the crucial problems of future telecommunications networks. It covers a broad range of topics, from Call Admission Control, congestion control, and QoS-routing for ATM networks, to network design and management, optical, mobile, and active networks, and Intelligent Mobile Agents. Today's telecommunications professionals need a working knowledge of CI to exploit its potential to overcome emerging challenges. The CI community must become acquainted with those challenges to take advantage of the enormous opportunities the telecommunications field offers. This text meets both those needs, clearly, concisely, and with a depth certain to inspire further theoretical and practical advances.

A software agent has a spectrum of definitions. At one end of the scale are relatively simple, client-based software applications that can assist users in performing mundane tasks such as sorting e-mail or downloading web pages. This class of agents is often referred to as “personal assistant” agents. At the other end of the scale is the concept of sophisticated software entities possessing artificial intelligence that autonomously travel through a network environment and make complex decisions on a user's behalf.In telecommunications, the definition lies somewhere between those two extremes. This classification of mobile agents, although not strictly adhering to the definition of “intelligent agents” originally proposed by the artificial intelligence community, is generally acknowledged to be a useful categorization and has started to gain widespread acceptance. We therefore define a mobile agent as a program that acts on behalf of a user or another program and is able to migrate from host to host on a network under its own control. The agent chooses when and where it will migrate and may interrupt its own execution and continue elsewhere on the network. The agent returns results and messages in an asynchronous fashion.This volume discusses the emerging field of mobile software agents and their applications to the area of telecommunications, such as active networks, e-commerce, the Internet, interactive QoS, network management, and feature interactions. It addresses the needs of a wide audience, including researchers, software agent systems and telecommunication applications designers, and users of software agents.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Mobile Agents for Telecommunication Applications, MATA 2001, held in Montreal, Canada in August 2001. The 26 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the volume. Among the topics addressed are network management, mobile applications, nomadic computing, feature interaction, Internet applications, QoS managment, policy-based management, interactive multimedia, tele-learning, and computer telephony integration.

Mobile agents refer to self-contained and identi?able computer programs that can move within the network and can act on behalf of the user or another entity. Most of the current research work on the mobile agent paradigm has two general goals: reduction of network traf?c and asynchronous interaction. These two goals stem directly from the desire to reduce information overload and to ef?ciently use network resources. There are certainly many motivations for the use of a mobile agent paradigm; h- ever, intelligent information retrieval, network and mobility management, and network services are currently the three most cited application targets for a mobile agent system. The aim of the workshop is to provide a unique opportunity for researchers, software and application developers, and computer network technologists to discuss new dev- opments in the mobile agent technology and applications. After last year’s very successful workshop in Ottawa, Canada (110 attendees), this year’s workshop will focus on mobile agent issues across the areas of network m- agement, mobile applications, nomadic computing, e-commerce, ad-hoc networks and applications, feature interactions, Internet applications, QoS management, policybased management, interactive multimedia, and computer–telephony integration.

Agent technology has recently become one of the most vibrant and fastest growing areas in information technology. This is the first systematic introduction to software agents with the goal of exploiting them in future communication systems. The coherently written chapters provide complementary coverage of the relevant issues. Multi-agent systems and mobile agent approaches are presented and applied to important topics in future communication systems.

Telecommunication Network Intelligence is a state-of-the-art book that deals with issues related to the development, distribution, and management of intelligent capabilities and services in telecommunication networks. The book contains recent results of research and development in the following areas, among others: Platforms for Advanced Services; Active and Programmable Networks; Network Security, Intelligence, and Monitoring; Quality-of-Service Management; Mobile Agents; Dynamic Switching and Network Control; Services in Wireless Networks; Infrastructure for Flexible Services. Telecommunication Network Intelligence comprises the proceedings of SmartNet 2000, the Sixth International Conference on Intelligence in Networks, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held at the Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, in September 2000.