Ant colony optimization based model for network zero-configuration

Abstract

Today's networks are becoming increasingly dynamic in their configuration and less dependent on centralized services. Naturally these networks rely on common TCP/IP protocols such as DNS, DHCP, MADCAP and LDAP, which in turn require an administrative staff which may not be feasible always. For increasingly popular ad-hoc and small home networks, the technical knowledge of end-users is open limited and administrative skill can be lacking. In a world where networks are beginning to connect not only computer users of varying technical skill but also a huge variety of personal digital devices the end-user can't always be expected to have the time, desire, or knowledge to configure their network. Thus automatic network configuration has become an inevitable facility to have and more so on distributed networks. The Zero-Configuration Committee on the IETF has addressed this issue and issued various standards. In this paper we work for achieving many of the functionalities of Zero-Configuration for large scale networks, using Ant Colony Optimization techniques. Ant Colony Optimization achieves large scale control of distributed entities (where centralized supports are scarce) using simple cooperating and coordinating entities. Simulations were run to demonstrate Ant Colony Optimization based algorithms for achieving zero-configuration.