Scalable Migration for Mobile Agents

Scalable Migration for Mobile Agents

Martin Geier, Franz J. Hauck

english March 1999, 12 pages

TR-I4-99-02

[Abstract] [Full Paper (ps,http) , 173 kB] [Full Paper (pdf) , 13 kB]

Keywords: Mobility, Mobile Agents, Scalability, CORBA, AspectIX

Abstract: Mobile agents are a promising approach to distributed software. The typical programming paradigm considers a mobile agent to be a mobile object or a group of objects migrating together. With implementing "real world" applications agents will get bigger and bigger. Then the question arises whether mobile agents implemented as a single migration entity are still the adequate programming paradigm. The consequence would be that mobility has to be confined or the praised advantage of bandwith limitation will be lost. The Fragmented Object Agent Model offers a solution to this scalability problem. Agents are split into smaller and mobile fragments, which still belong to the same agent. With this solution we can offer scalability in migration by migrating just fragments and not the whole object at once, dynamic adaption of migration decisions at runtime and omnipresence of the mobile agent by the usage of replication.