Mobile Agents

Outline

 Characterization of mobile agents

 Working
 Applications
 Implication
 Security issues
 A software agents refer to programs that
perform certain tasks on behalf of the user.
 Example: Remote procdure call
 Usually communicates through message
passing mechanism
 Mobile agents migrate from host to host
Autonomy

 The agents themselves decide the sequence of

actions to be performed to achieve the user’s
task.
 Decisions are taken by the agents, without
interventions from the sender.
 Agents can have artificial intelligence
 A multihop agents are free to choose when and
where to move.
Responsiveness and
Communicative ability
 Agents perceive the changes in the
environment and respond to them
 Communicate to the home machine and other
agents as and when needed
 In some applications they work as a group
Mobility and adapatabilty

 They can move to different nodes of a network

 Different nodes in a network may have different
platforms. Agents adapt to suit to the new
platform.
Outline

 Characterization of mobile agents

 Working
 Applications
 Implication
 Security issues
Working

 A mobile agent consists of the program code

and the program execution state
 The agent is then dispatched to execute on a
remote computer called host.
 Host should co-operate with mobile agent by
providing a suitable excecution environment.
 Uses resources, like CPU of the host
 It may hop to another host with its code, data
and execution state, or return to the home
machine.
 If it is transfered to another host, it doesn't start
the code from the beginning, but continues
excecution from where it has stopped
Outline

 Characterization of mobile agents

 Working
 Applications
 Implication
 Security issues
Data intensive domains

 Where large amount of data is remotely located

 Example: data mining, sentiment analysis
 We may be interested only in the processed
output
 User can send an agent, which has all the code
to do the processing. Process will be taking
place at the server. Only the results are
transfered over the network
Extensible servers

 Where user can ship and install an agent

representing him permenantly on the remote
server.
 Runs autonomously, and informs the owner
when any event of interest occurs
Dynamic deployment of software

 In local networks of a company or organization,

if some software installed needs to be
reconfigured, mobile agent can be sent all of
them to accomplish the task
Network management

 Large networks like telecommunication network

monitoring and management is a difficult task
 Requires gathering and processing large
amount of data from the network, and
responding instantaneously
 Conventional centralized methods are SNMP
and CNIP
 Centralized management method will consume
a good amount of bandwidth
 Light weight, distributed and intelligent network
management systems using mobile agents can
be deployed
 They move across the network, collects
information and process at the nodes itself and
interacts with each other
 Load balancing and congestion control can be
done efficiently, without using much bandwidth
 Agents can react quickly to local events like
breakdown of a link
 Agents can carry out the task even if the other
parts of the network are unreachable. Important
in mobile computing.
E-commerce

 Agents can travel to different trading sites and

fetch relevant information
 Mobile agent can be programmed in such a
way that it can perform trading on behalf of the
owner
Outline

 Characterization of mobile agents

 Working
 Applications
 Implication
 Security issues
Bandwidth conservation

 By placing agent directly at the point of

information, rather than sending many queries
and files acoss the network
Deligate tasks to agents when
user is not connected
 Majority of endsystems in the internet are not
permanently connected
 Agents can represent users to do their tasks
when they are not connected
Band width conservation