March 1999/Vol. 42. No. 3 | Danny B. Lange and Mitsuru Oshima
The article "Seven Good Reasons for Mobile Agents" by Danny B. Lange and Mitsuru Oshima discusses the benefits of using mobile agents in distributed systems. Mobile agents are distinct from stationary agents, which are bound to their initial execution environment, as they can move between hosts in a network, transporting their state and code. The key advantages of mobile agents include:
1. **Reducing Network Load**: Mobile agents can package and dispatch conversations to destinations where interactions occur locally, reducing network traffic and data transfer.
2. **Robustness and Fault-Tolerance**: Agents can dynamically react to adverse situations, ensuring robust and fault-tolerant systems.
3. **E-commerce**: Mobile agents are ideal for real-time access to remote resources and agent-to-agent negotiation in e-commerce transactions.
4. **Personal Assistance**: Agents can perform tasks on remote hosts, acting as assistants for their creators.
5. **Secure Brokering**: Mobile agents facilitate secure collaborations without trusting all participants.
6. **Distributed Information Retrieval**: Agents can create search indexes locally at remote sources, reducing data transfer.
7. **Telecommunication Networks Services**: Mobile agents support dynamic network reconfiguration and user customization in advanced telecommunication services.
8. **Workflow Applications and Groupware**: Agents enhance workflow by providing autonomy and information flow among coworkers.
9. **Monitoring and Notification**: Agents can monitor information sources asynchronously and wait for specific events.
10. **Information Dissemination**: Agents can push news and software updates directly to customers' computers.
11. **Parallel Processing**: Mobile agents can manage parallel processing tasks by creating clones in the network.
The authors emphasize that while there are no killer applications for mobile agents, many existing applications benefit from their use.The article "Seven Good Reasons for Mobile Agents" by Danny B. Lange and Mitsuru Oshima discusses the benefits of using mobile agents in distributed systems. Mobile agents are distinct from stationary agents, which are bound to their initial execution environment, as they can move between hosts in a network, transporting their state and code. The key advantages of mobile agents include:
1. **Reducing Network Load**: Mobile agents can package and dispatch conversations to destinations where interactions occur locally, reducing network traffic and data transfer.
2. **Robustness and Fault-Tolerance**: Agents can dynamically react to adverse situations, ensuring robust and fault-tolerant systems.
3. **E-commerce**: Mobile agents are ideal for real-time access to remote resources and agent-to-agent negotiation in e-commerce transactions.
4. **Personal Assistance**: Agents can perform tasks on remote hosts, acting as assistants for their creators.
5. **Secure Brokering**: Mobile agents facilitate secure collaborations without trusting all participants.
6. **Distributed Information Retrieval**: Agents can create search indexes locally at remote sources, reducing data transfer.
7. **Telecommunication Networks Services**: Mobile agents support dynamic network reconfiguration and user customization in advanced telecommunication services.
8. **Workflow Applications and Groupware**: Agents enhance workflow by providing autonomy and information flow among coworkers.
9. **Monitoring and Notification**: Agents can monitor information sources asynchronously and wait for specific events.
10. **Information Dissemination**: Agents can push news and software updates directly to customers' computers.
11. **Parallel Processing**: Mobile agents can manage parallel processing tasks by creating clones in the network.
The authors emphasize that while there are no killer applications for mobile agents, many existing applications benefit from their use.