An Efficient and Self-adaptive Transferring Protocol for Intelligent Mobile Agent

In mobile agent based applications, computing tasks are accomplished locally by interactions between the mobile agent and target hosts. Accordingly, the dominant factor contributing to response time of the system is the protocol or policy with which the mobility is implemented. Separating the data or computing results from mobile agent entity is adopted in our mobile agent platform to reduce the transferring time first. Additionally, reducing the time spent in finding the migrating path can efficiently improve the performance of the system. A transferring protocol based on the concepts is proposed in this paper with which mobile agent based application can be improved in self-adaptability to complex network environments and response time of the overall system. When the agent arrives at the specified host, it can get enough information on making migration decision and operating without spending much time in detecting the capability of communication links by connecting with adjacent hosts. The availability and robustness of mobile agent platforms can also be improved to a considerable degree with the protocol.