Deployment Mode Functionalities of Dynamic Domain Optimization Agent (DDOA) for OSPF Area Design

The Dynamic Domain Optimization Agent (DDOA) is a novel network design agent that has been proposed in the PILSNER program to interact with a link topology manager to automate assignment of links to OSPF areas and the selection of area border routers. This paper describes a preliminary design of DDOA functionalities during mission execution, where a distributed community of DDOA agents uses the area design computed prior to the mission as a guideline to pursue several goals: (1) network optimization-keep performance metrics and design constraints within acceptable bounds, and (2) network maintenance-preserve or increase level of connectivity by avoiding islands of disconnected nodes. The lead DDOA recommends a corrective action whenever design constraints are no longer met such as initial partitioning of a flat network topology, OSPF area split or merge, network-wide replan, link reassignment between areas, and merging newly formed or previously disconnected fragments