The following list attempt to highlight application areas of Network Computing. The list is not exhaustive, so students can select other applications. All of the applications can be addressed by methods based on distributed objects (CORBA, RMI) or mobile code. It would be interesting to attempt both of these approaches and compare the results. All projects will mainly use Java.
 

1. System Management
• plug-and-play components
• software distribution and upgrading
• composable applications (posting, composition, billing)
2. Network Management
• fault diagnosis
• error recovery
• selective network discovery
• plug-and-play networks
• network planning
3. Communications
• soft protocols
• adaptive message delivery
• message forwarding
4. Electronic commerce
• buying agents (brokers; e.g., books, CDs, cars, homes, etc.)
• interface agents
• selling agents
• investment
5. Battleground
• command decision support (evaluation, decision)
• remote operation
• cooperative behavior (shooting others in an optimal way)
• electronic espionage (recognizing and fighting enemy agents)
6. Remote Control
• robots
• softbots
• auto-control (e.g., elevators)
7. Remote expertise
• medical
• legal
• counseling
• distance learning
8. Multimedia distribution
• personalized news
• intelligent targeting of ads
• video on demand
9. Cooperative Problem Solving
• distributed diagnosis
• distributed planning
• resource allocation
• manufacturing
• scheduling (e.g., meetings)
• robot coordination
10. Support for human cooperation
• distributed CAD
• cooperative diagnosis (e.g., medical)
• legal cooperation
• cooperative art
• brainstorming support
11. Data mining
• filtering based on mobile agents (autonomous collectors, reporters); e.g., job hunting, bibliographical searches, etc.
• agent reporters and filters (posting reporters, filtering information at the source); e.g., stock market
• cooperative distributed informers (avoiding duplication, following interesting threads); e.g., intelligent search engines
12. Other