In this paper, we first propose an integer mathematical programming model for the POP topological optimization problem in IP networks. It consists of selecting the number of routers and their types, selecting the interface card types and finally, connecting the access and the backbone links to the ports. The goal is to find the minimum cost POP. Since this problem is NP-hard, we propose a heuristic for this problem.

In this paper, we tackle the routing and wavelength assignment problem for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks containing permanent and reliable wavelength paths (WPs). This problem consists of finding the routes and the wavelength for each WP for the normal state of the network and for the important failure scenarios. We propose a mathematical programming model for this problem. In order to find a solution within a reasonable amount of time, a heuristic algorithm is proposed and the results show that quasi-optimal solutions can be obtained with the proposed heuristic algorithm.

Network management of heterogeneous components in large networks is still hard to achieve automatically and efficiently. It is now a fact that networks will not grow using simple and similar technologies but tend to use complex protocols and many different devices from many different vendors. Mobile agents have the ability to migrate on nodes and cope with different technologies. In this paper, we present a framework that has the ability to perform network management tasks on networks of heterogeneous devices. While we believe that mobile agents must be efficient, we try first to build an architecture that can be integrated into real networks easily without overwhelming efforts or radical changes. This is, from our point of view, a first step to validate efforts done on mobile agents and network management.