A Mission-Based Multiagent System for Internet Applications

Journal of Systems Architecture, 2000

The recent development of telecommunication networks has contributed to the success of applications such as information retrieval and electronic commerce, as well as all the services that take advantage of communication in distributed systems. In this area, the emerging technology of mobile agents aroused considerable interest. Mobile agents are applications that can move through the network for carrying out a given task on behalf of the user. In this work we present a platform (called MAP (Mobile Agents Platform)) for the development and the management of mobile agents. The language used both for developing the platform and for carrying out the agents is Java. The platform gives the user all the basic tools needed for creating some applications based on the use of agents. It enables us to create, run, suspend, resume, deactivate, reactivate local agents, to stop their execution, to make them communicate each other and migrate.

Coordination of Internet Agents, 2001

Agent technology has evolved rapidly over the past few years along a number of dimensions giving rise to numerous "flavours" of agents such as intelligent agents, mobile agents, etc. One of the most attractive and natural fields for the development of agent technology is the Internet with its vast quantity of available information and offered services. In fact, the term "Internet agent" is effectively an umbrella for most of the other types of agents, since Internet agents should enjoy intelligence, mobility, adaptability, etc. All these different types of agents must be able to somehow interact with each other for the purpose of exchanging information, collaborating or managing heterogeneous environments. This survey presents some of the most common models and technologies that offer coordination mechanisms for Internet agents. It argues for the need of using coordination, then it presents some basic infrastructure technologies before examining in more detail particular coordination models for Internet agents, themselves classified into some general categories. 1.2 Internet, WWW and Coordination Recently, there has been an increase in the development of applications that need to cooperate, coordinate and share their information with other applications, either with or without user intervention. This is particularly true for Web-based applications that operate in an open system environment and where data and resources are distributed. This leads to the need for developing techniques that allow negotiation and

2000

Over the last couple of years we have been working on the development of mobile agents systems and its application to the areas of telecommunications and network management. This work path produced positive results: a competitive mobile agent platform was built, the run-time benefits of mobile agents were proved, and our industrial partners have developed practical applications that are being integrated into commercial products. However, despite the positive results, we feel that mobile agent technology is still not ready to enter the path of mainstream software development. This is the reason why this technology has not yet gain large acceptance by the developers of real applications, despite the large number of interesting experiences already available. In our perspective, one of the main reasons for this situation arises from the traditional approach to mobile agent technology. This approach, based on the familiar concept of mobile agent distributed platforms as extensions of the operating system, focuses too much on mobile agents and associated issues (mobility, agent lifecycle, security, coordination, etc.) and provides poor support for the development of applications where mobile agents are just one of several available technologies. Learning from past experience, we are now working on a new approach where the focus is brought back to the applications and mobile agents become just one the tools available to develop distributed systems. This provides a much lighter framework for application-based mobile agents This paper presents the lessons learned from our previous project and discusses this new concept we are developing: application-centric mobile agent systems. * Mobile agents do impose more complex security problems in fully open environments where there is no user accountability (for authentication and authorization). Nevertheless, most applications are not deployed in that kind of environments.

1998

Considerable work has been done in the area of agents and agent technology in the past few years. The agent metaphor has been applied, with varying degrees of success, to a variety of situations from personal assistants to distributed problem solving. This paper describes a system designed to support agents on the lntemet and addresses some basic issues dealing with network agents: Agent transport, agent security, and agent locator services. While work has 'already been done on these three issues, in most cases the existing systems and solutions do not address or scale well to the requirements of a large-scale, uncontrolled network such as the Interact. This paper explores transport and security issues for agents on the lntemet as well as an innovative approach that uses the WorldWide Web as a distributed knowledge base to help agents find other agents. Overview Agent technology and agent-based systems have been the focus of significant research and development efforts over the last few years. The definitions of what constitutes an agent vary widely and consequently so do systems that claim to be agent-based. This paper takes a network-centric view of agents, particularly mobile agents, which have the following characteristics: Independent, long-term existence (with agent state being preserved across multiple activations) Autonomous behavior, which allows agents to move around thc network as they decidē Mobility over a network (with the state of the agent being preserved across multiple transportations) Ability to replicatē Adaptability (learning from previous experience) Represent and act on the interests of a user The above characteristics separate traditional client-server or applet-bascd systems from agent-based systems. Mobile agents are a promising technology for many new kinds of applications ranging from exciting cybcr-malls to the more mundane tasks of email filtering and network monitoring. While any of these applications could be implemented without agents, agents provide the most straightforward approach. They also provide other distinct advantages such as reduced network bandwidth, better support for mobile