28-01-2013, 04:50 PM
Mobile Agents For Mobile Computing
Mobile.ppt (Size: 106 KB / Downloads: 104)
What are Mobile Agents?
A mobile agent is an executing program that can migrate, at times of its own choosing, from machine to machine in a heterogeneous network.
On each machine, the mobile agent interacts with stationary service agents and other resources to accomplish its task.
Mobile Agents are an effective paradigm for distributed applications, and are particularly attractive for partially connected computing.
How does a mobile agent work?
An agent migrates off a mobile device and roams the network to gather information.
It accesses the needed resources efficiently.
Not affected by sudden loss of connection.
When the user reconnects, the agent returns to the mobile device with the results.
Can work in the reverse manner too!!
Advantages of using mobile agents
Ease the development, testing and deployment of distributed applications.
Do not require the pre installation of application specific software at each site.
Move the programmer away from the rigid client- server model to the more flexible peer-peer model.
Lead to more scalable operations.
Applications of Mobile Agents
NOT an ENABLING technology since there are FEW applications(if any) that are IMPOSSIBLE without Mobile Agents.
Distributed information processing :
Searching distributed collection of
Technical reports
Medical records
Searching three dimensional drawings of mechanical parts
Agents in Mobile Computing
Support for disconnected operation
Dock Master
Jump Off Process
Agent Navigation and adaptation
Network Sensing
Navigation Agents
Inter-agent Communication
Agent_meet
Agent Remote Procedure Call(ARPC)
Agent Navigation And Adaptation
Network Sensing
Tool for determining whether the local host is physically connected.
Tool to determine whether a specific host is reachable.
Tool to determine the expected bandwidth to a remote host – Traffic monitor agent.
Navigation Agent
Locate other agents that can serve their needs – Dynamic index of service agents and their locations.
Virtual yellow pages.
Conclusion
Mobile agents are a general purpose framework for implementing distributed applications.
Current research is going on to develop a mobile agent system that
Adequately protects an agent from malicious machines.
Supports agent migration that is only a small factor slower than a RPC call that transmits an equivalent amount of data.
Allow agents to execute nearly as quickly as if they were compiled (directly) into native machine codes.