IJCSN - International Journal of Computer Science and Network, Volume 6, Issue 6, December 2017 ISSN (Online) : 2277-5420 www.IJCSN.org Impact Factor: 1.5 826 Copyright (c) 2017 International Journal of Computer Science and Network. All Rights Reserved. Mobile Agent for Monitoring and Evaluation of Security Applications in a Network Environment 1 Amosa Babalola; 2 Onyeka Ndidi; 3 Olaniyi Busayo; 4 Babafemi Olusola 1 Department of Computer Science, San Juan de la Cruz University, San Jose, Costa Rica 2,3,4 Department of Computer Science, Federal Polytechnic, Ede. Nigeria Abstract - Mobile agent paradigm derives from two basic disciplines –artificial intelligence from where the concept of an agent originated and distributed systems that define the notion of code mobility having found applications in several areas. However, the implementation of an agent-based system can be through any client/server technology, it is different from classical client/server systems because there is no clear distinction between a client and a server. The mobile agent technology offers several unique capabilities to address the challenges in this area. The objective of this research is to; design a Mobile Agent System for monitoring and evaluating security applications in a network environment and develop a mobile agent capable of increasing the performance of the mobile agent by reducing the size of the agent and also to develop a mobile agent that will be acceptable to all hosts. Keywords - Mobile Agent, Performance, Computer Network, Code Mobility, Security Monitoring. 1. Introduction he Mobile agents are software abstractions that can migrate across the network, suspend action there and migrate from there to another node, and resume operations from where they left off on the previous node. It has the propensity of communicating in agent language. In concept, a mobile agent can move its complete virtual machine from one host to another. While, on a particular host, the mobile agent can carry out some tasks, and afterward, it can migrate to another host to continue operation from where it stopped action on the previous host. As an executing program, a mobile agent is made up of code, data and execution state and is embedded with some intelligence and the ability to autonomously migrate across the network. As it moves, the mobile agent can represent its owner in various tasks and satisfy its requests. It can communicate with the host as well as other agents on the host; it can sense its environment and carry out a set of activities to attain its mission and achieve its goals [1]. The mobile agent paradigm has become topical since the mid-1990s. It can be deployed in many complex applications such as the internet, Mobile Data Computing, Electronic Commerce, Manufacturing and Scientific Computing [2]. Mobile agent model derives from two fundamental disciplines –artificial intelligence from where the idea of an agent emanates and distributed systems that define the concept of code mobility having found applications in several areas [3]. Managing and monitoring applications in the networks with hundreds of computers have become a challenging and tedious task for today’s system administrators. A general computing infrastructure in a medium to a large organization with many nodes, possibly of different kinds, organized into multiple local-area networks and administrative domains. Administration functions require periodic upgrading of software and monitoring application in a network as well monitoring of activities of users at various nodes to defend against potential attacks by miscreants. The complexity of monitoring large regulatory networks— with different kinds of hardware/software components frequently added to the environment or some existing ones periodically upgraded — require new approaches to building network applications, monitoring of protocols and functions. The mobile agent technology offers several unique capabilities to address the challenges in this area. Many research works have been carried out to measure the throughput/bandwidth of a network [4], [5], [6], [7]. A notable effort to explore through the experiment of significant value of throughput for network assessment and evaluation has been presented in [8]. As presented in [9], a study on distributed network monitoring using mobile agent paradigms is motivated by the fact that network monitoring and management have become necessary due to the proliferation of computers and the rapid growth of the Internet. An experimental study of bandwidth management in a computer network environment is presented in [10]. Furthermore in [1], [3] mobile agent system for T