6533b82efe1ef96bd129311d

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Mobile agents principles of operation

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Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the mobile agent technology and summarizes their features, principles of operation and implementation elements. Some development tools are also discussed. The chapter provides general description of mobile agents as an advanced software paradigm, which extends object oriented programming. Then it discusses principles of operation starting from agent intelligent behavior and continuing with mobility, communication, coordination, and fault tolerance. Finally, as for related topics, monitoring, performances, and security issues are discussed in the chapter. Agent monitoring techniques are very useful because they allow users to know which agents are running on their host, as well as resources they are accessing. Performances can be evaluated according to different indexes and parameters. Mobile agent system security is a problem not so different from then general internet security problem and therefore security techniques are quite similar, and often based on encrypting algorithms, digital signatures, and biometrical devices for access control. The security problem has three main sides, which are communication security, server protection against agent attack, and agent protection against server attack.