Subject: Mobile Communication and Computing

Topic: Mobile Network

Difficulty: Low

Mobile Agent

1. A mobile agent is an executing program that can migrate, at times of its own choosing, from machine to machine in a heterogeneous network.

2. On each machine, the mobile agent interacts with stationary service agents and other resources to accomplish its task. Mobile Agents are an effective paradigm for distributed applications, and are particularly attractive for partially connected computing.

   Mobile Agent works

   1. An agent migrates off a mobile device and roams the network to gather information.
   2. It accesses the needed resources efficiently.
   3. Not affected by sudden loss of connection.

Advantages of using mobile agents

1. Ease the development, testing and deployment of distributed applications.
2. Do not require the pre installation of application specific software at each site.
3. Move the programmer away from the rigid client- server model to the more flexible peer-peer model.