Software agent technology offers the promise of more scaleable and flexible network management systems. A set of concepts has been developed from this technology and used to construct an experimental system in the domain of ATM performance management. Evaluation of the system confirms that a software agent approach offers concepts which will be key to developing network management systems that are cheaper to build, change and discard.

Asynchronous transfer mode technology promises a flexible, multiservice network that will support the broadband future. It will need to be robust and efficient in delivering quality of service, which will not be achieved by network protocols alone. Performance-management systems will be needed. If future networks are to be flexible-allowing new services to be added easily-then their management systems will need to be equally flexible. Approaches derived from the developing technologies of distributed object-oriented computing (common object request broker architecture-CORBA) and distributed artificial intelligence (agents) could allow management systems to be implemented as sets of small-grain, cooperating distributed objects. Such systems should be more flexible, more robust, and easier to modify. This paper presents a framework being developed for understanding performance-management functions and an approach to their implementation based on agent technology and the use of CORBA platforms.