Mobile Agents In Networking And Distributed Computing

The book focuses on mobile agents, which are computer programs that can autonomously migrate between network sites. This text introduces the concepts and principles of mobile agents, provides an overview of mobile agent technology, and focuses on applications in networking and distributed computing.

Mobile agent computing is being used in fields as diverse as artificial intelligence, computational economics and robotics. Agents' ability to adapt dynamically and execute asynchronously and autonomously brings potential advantages in terms of fault-tolerance, flexibility and simplicity. This monograph focuses on studying mobile agents as modelled in distributed systems research and in particular within the framework of research performed in the distributed algorithms community. It studies the fundamental question of how to achieve rendezvous, the gathering of two or more agents at the same node of a network. Like leader election, such an operation is a useful subroutine in more general computations that may require the agents to synchronize, share information, divide up chores, etc. The work provides an introduction to the algorithmic issues raised by the rendezvous problem in the distributed computing setting. For the most part our investigation concentrates on the simplest case of two agents attempting to rendezvous on a ring network. Other situations including multiple agents, faulty nodes and other topologies are also examined. An extensive bibliography provides many pointers to related work not covered in the text. The presentation has a distinctly algorithmic, rigorous, distributed computing flavor and most results should be easily accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in computer science and mathematics departments. Table of Contents: Models for Mobile Agent Computing / Deterministic Rendezvous in a Ring / Multiple Agent Rendezvous in a Ring / Randomized Rendezvous in a Ring / Other Models / Other Topologies

Mobile agents refer to self-contained and identi?able computer programs that can move within the network and can act on behalf of the user or another entity. Most of the current research work on the mobile agent paradigm has two general goals: reduction of network traf?c and asynchronous interaction. These two goals stem directly from the desire to reduce information overload and to ef?ciently use network resources. There are certainly many motivations for the use of a mobile agent paradigm; h- ever, intelligent information retrieval, network and mobility management, and network services are currently the three most cited application targets for a mobile agent system. The aim of the workshop is to provide a unique opportunity for researchers, software and application developers, and computer network technologists to discuss new dev- opments in the mobile agent technology and applications. After last year’s very successful workshop in Ottawa, Canada (110 attendees), this year’s workshop will focus on mobile agent issues across the areas of network m- agement, mobile applications, nomadic computing, e-commerce, ad-hoc networks and applications, feature interactions, Internet applications, QoS management, policybased management, interactive multimedia, and computer–telephony integration.

Distributed Computing by Mobile Entities is concerned with the study of the computational and complexity issues arising in systems of decentralized computational entities operating in a spatial universe Encompassing and modeling a large variety of application environments and systems, from robotic swarms to networks of mobile sensors, from software mobile agents in communication networks to crawlers and viruses on the web, the theoretical research in this area intersects distributed computing with the fields of computational geometry (especially for continuous spaces), control theory, graph theory and combinatorics (especially for discrete spaces). The research focus is on determining what tasks can be performed by the entities, under what conditions, and at what cost. In particular, the central question is to determine what minimal hypotheses allow a given problem to be solved. This book is based on the lectures and tutorial presented at the research meeting on “Moving and Computing" (mac) held at La Maddalena Island in June 2017. Greatly expanded, revised and updated, each of the lectures forms an individual Chapter. Together, they provide a map of the current knowledge about the boundaries of distributed computing by mobile entities.

The future of computing ever-increasingly lies in ever-increasing mobility in which computers continue their network operations while physically changing their location, and code moves from system to system performing its designated tasks throughout a network. This book brings together in one single resource the leading edge of research and practice in three areas of mobility: process migration, mobile computing, and mobile agents. Presented chronologically, the papers in this book--each written by leading experts in that particular area--track the development of critical technologies that have influenced mobility. Introductions by the editors and original afterwords by many of the papers' authors provide information on implementation and practical application, technological context, and updates on the most recent advances. The book highlights many common challenges and solutions inherent in various aspects of mobility: infrastructure, scalability, security, standards, robustness, naming and locating mobile entities, and more. Individual papers describe specific research and development in each of the three major areas, covering such topics as: An analysis of process migration from the earliest work to contemporary commercial systems Barriers to effective mobile connectivity, mobile IP, and ubiquitous computing Descriptions of various mobile agent systems, such as Telescript, Aglets, Agent TCL, and the mobile agent system standard (MASIF) This selection of influential papers illustrates the evolution of mobile technology as well as the state of the art of one of the most significant trends in computing. 0201379287B04062001

"This book focuses on network management and traffic engineering for Internet and distributed computing technologies, as well as present emerging technology trends and advanced platforms"--Provided by publisher.

Both authors have taught the course of “Distributed Systems” for many years in the respective schools. During the teaching, we feel strongly that “Distributed systems” have evolved from traditional “LAN” based distributed systems towards “Internet based” systems. Although there exist many excellent textbooks on this topic, because of the fast development of distributed systems and network programming/protocols, we have difficulty in finding an appropriate textbook for the course of “distributed systems” with orientation to the requirement of the undergraduate level study for today’s distributed technology. Specifically, from - to-date concepts, algorithms, and models to implementations for both distributed system designs and application programming. Thus the philosophy behind this book is to integrate the concepts, algorithm designs and implementations of distributed systems based on network programming. After using several materials of other textbooks and research books, we found that many texts treat the distributed systems with separation of concepts, algorithm design and network programming and it is very difficult for students to map the concepts of distributed systems to the algorithm design, prototyping and implementations. This book intends to enable readers, especially postgraduates and senior undergraduate level, to study up-to-date concepts, algorithms and network programming skills for building modern distributed systems. It enables students not only to master the concepts of distributed network system but also to readily use the material introduced into implementation practices.

A mobile agent system could be attacked by malicious agents, platforms and third parties. Mobile agents simply offer greater opportunities for abuse and misuse, which broadens the scale of threats significantly. In addition, since mobile agents have some unique characteristics such as their mobility, security problems have become more complicated in these systems. These security problems have become a bottleneck in the development and maintenance of mobile agent systems, especially in security sensitive applications such as electronic commerce. This book introduces the concept and structure of mobile agent systems and discusses various attacks and countermeasures. The emphasis is on the formal modeling and analysis of secure mobile agent systems and their applications.