MOBILE AGENTS

MOBILE AGENTS

• Installable Agents
• Extensible Agents
• Delegated Agents (Distributed Management)
• Migrating Agents

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Mobile agents are similar to regular agents except that they can also move from one network element to another.

There are four types of mobile agents:

• installable agents - special purpose agents can be installed.
• extensible agents - current agents can be extended.
• delegated agents - work can be delegated to agents.
• migrating agents - agents can move about instead of residing on a node.

Why use mobile agents?

Static agents must reside and use resources on every network element being managed. Mobile agents do not, so they may reduce overall network traffic and conserve resources on network devices.

• Mobile agents can be sent to trouble areas to do on-the-spot diagnosis and repair.
• A mobile agent can be delegated by the management workstation to manage a subset of the network, and provide a summary report.

It is one of the areas of research in the department of Systems and Computer Engineering to investigate the efficiency of mobile agents under real network conditions. As part of my fourth year project, I am working with a team of graduate students and researchers to develop a framework for testing mobile agents.