Agent-based modeling as a tool to investigate the viability of Next-Generation Networks

This work describes an approach, developed through the use of Agent-Based Modeling, to investigate the financial and technical viability of Next-Generation Networks (NGNs). Bringing to fruition NGNs is such a complex task that new cooperation models among involved players - consistent with the long term sustainability of the large investments required - and innovative tools to describe the complexity of their interactions are necessary. Cooperation and complexity are recurring concepts, in projects established to develop NGNs, where relationships among cooperating entities can not be modeled through linear mathematics and/or classical prediction systems. The modeling and investigation of emergent behaviors performed through the analysis of ad-hoc created, simulation scenarios seems to be one the few ways to perform any meaningful analysis. Among the methods that are becoming more and more popular, today, there is the so called Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), where a complex system is modeled as a dynamic network of autonomous, interacting entities named “agents”. In this work, the authors present a brief overview of this methodology and discuss the application to the development of NGNs, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, by developing a specific business case to gain insights about the feasibility of modern communication infrastructures - better known as NGNs' programs. The results of the performed investigations show that the level of complexity is so high, for these projects, that new cooperation models among the involved players become a necessity, in order to succeed in achieving the goals to secure both the return of the investment and the attainment of better, advanced communications - thus enabling greater efficiency in business, stronger fulfillment of a fundamental need of individuals, but above all, giving a larger contribution to the development of a better society.