A service based agent system supporting mobile computing

Abstract

The ability of autonomous and disconnected operations of mobile agents makes them a high-potential technology for mobile access networks. However, along with the potential benefits, autonomy, and disconnected operations of mobile agents in wireless environment raise fundamental problems, which so far have found little attention in existing mobile agent systems. The Java Agent Environment (JAE), developed at the Aachen University, is an infrastructure supporting mobile agent technology and considering the requirements of the agent network at the border to wireless access networks. The focus of the agent system implementation has been on service trading facilities and the support of services in mobile computing. The overview of the architecture is given by a top-down approach, introducing the Java based agent middleware and the core technology for agent mobility, security, services and communication. Much effort has been put into agent migration and the involvement of small mobile devices which has lead to the Ticket concept, introducing Agent Transport Protocol manipulation and the consideration of mobile agentsÆ resource requirements. The concepts of mobile agents are suited for personal disconnected operations – especially in wireless access networks. Therefore, a solution to management of disconnected and malfunctioning mobile agents is proposed that enable a tracking and handling of mobile agents both during their scheduled execution, and in the presence of unforeseen errors and failures. Finally, some mathematical thoughts on (wireless) network management show possible advantages of an architecture combining the traditional client/server approach with mobile agent technology.