Topology Discovery in Dynamic and Decentralized Networks with Mobile Agents and Swarm Intelligence

Topology discovery is a key task for several computer network applications such as diagnosis, routing and network management. Traditional approaches for topology discovery cannot always be used in dynamic and decentralized networks, such as unstructured peer-to-peer networks and wireless ad hoc networks. This paper introduces a strategy based on mobile agents and swarm intelligence for topology discovery in such environments. The proposed strategy is inspired by ant colonies, employing simple agents that disseminate information about the topology and communicate through stigmergy. Experimental results show that the nodes obtain descriptions which are very close to the real network topology. It is also shown that the stigmergy-based method for the selection of agent destinations produces better results than a random selection, and that the number of agents can be dynamically adjusted as the size of the network changes.