CyberAgents

                          FTP Software, Inc.

                           Kevin Clougherty
                            David Gibbons
                              Ray Burns

Abstract:

Mobile agents are programs that travel among hosts on a network and
perform pre- or dynamically defined tasks on visited hosts. Mobile
agents are useful only when users and platforms are protected from
malicious or accidental damage by adequate security services.
Important applications of mobile agents include intranet management,
database operations and electronic commerce.

CyberAgents are a general-purpose class of mobile agents developed by
the Intelligent Agent Group at FTP Software, Inc. as a commercial
product.  The CyberAgent product line includes a Software Development
Kit (SDK) that provides an integrated facility for development,
deployment and management of CyberAgents. Other components of the
product line include a suite of CyberAgents to perform some of the
most basic tasks for which CyberAgents are suited.

A CyberAgent is a mobile, autonomous program written in the Java
programming language that includes calls to CyberAgent Application
Programming Interface (API) Java classes. CyberAgent APIs transform an
arbitrary Java application into a platform-independent CyberAgent that
can travel from computer to computer within TCP/IP networks under the
sender's control but subject to security restrictions. The
"CyberAgents" term refers both to FTP's mobile agents and the mobile
agent system (infrastructure) that supports their mobility and
provides a secure and controllable execution environment.

CyberAgents is a secure yet flexible mobile agent system that provides
for mobile agent development, deployment, and management. CyberAgents
feature a secure agent execution environment, agent activity control,
and travel management, secure agent transportation, and limited
inter-agent communication and collaboration. The system provides a
user interface that allows users to register and launch agents, view
agents execution results and status reports, set security options and
manage security information.

Applications using CyberAgent are under development for network
management tasks such as automatic software update, virus checking,
and platform inventory information collection as well as an IP
conflict resolution application. Efforts to improve and enhance the
system are currently centered on alternative user-interfaces, system
performance and inter-agent communications. We understand that the
current product capabilities address only the most basic of mobile
agent potential capabilities; however, the current product is a robust
basis from which to expand and encompass much of the promise of mobile
agents while maintaining adequate security levels. Cross-platform
agent communications are planned and the incorporation of an agent
communication language such as KQML is under consideration. We are
also interested in inter-operation between CyberAgents and other
mobile agent systems such as Telescript-based systems and Agent-Tcl,
possibly through a common agent platform or a standard agent transport
protocol.