Abstract for Markus Schwehm
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Abstract for Markus Schwehm
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Institute of Parallel and Distributed Prof. Kurt Rothermel High-Performance Systems (IPVR - VS) Dr. Markus Schwehm University of Stuttgart Joachim Baumann Breitwiesenstr. 20-22 Fritz Hohl D-70565 Stuttgart Nikolaos Radouniklis Germany Markus Strasser
MOLE: A Java Based Mobile Agent System
Mobile agents are a new programming model for distributed systems. Mobile agents are software components that serve to process a given task on behalf of a user. They are able to move autonomously through a network of hosts, while the (mobile) computer of the user might be temporarily disconnected from the network. Using this approach, communication intensive data processing can be moved to where the data is located. Mobile agents are generally viewed as a prerequisite for the development of an open electronic market.
Mobile Agent Systems
To support the mobility of software agents in a widely distributed, heterogeneous network of computers, a mobile agent system is needed to provide an open platform. Such a system has to supply the following functionality: * independence from underlying hard- and software * communication and migration of agents * service agents as interface to services * security of hosts against malicious agents * security of agents against malicious hosts * fault tolerance by distribution of the functionality
The MOLE Implementation
In the department 'Distributed Systems' of the University of Stuttgart the mobile agent system MOLE, which builds up on Java 1.0, has been designed and implemented. Version 1.0 has been released in June 1996. The package includes MoleView, a tool for the visualization of agents and agent interaction. MOLE runs under Unix/Linux, MS Windows 95 and Windows NT. Version 2.0 with extended functionality has been released by Spring 1997. The MOLE package can be downloaded from our Web-site at http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ipvr/vs/projekte/mole.html
Installations & Demonstrations
The mobile agent system MOLE has been installed on hosts in Berkeley, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Genf, Kaiserslautern, Stuttgart and Zuerich. On this distributed system the following demonstrations and applications have been presented: 'Mister X': Implementation of the board game 'Mister X' for the demonstration of load balancing and scalability issues. 'Swarms': Mobile cooperating agents for monitoring, control and maintenance of computer networks (with Siemens, Muenchen). 'HyperNews': Hypermedia newspaper with active documents using an agent-based, distributed and secure platform.
Projects & Collaborations
In the framework of the MOLE project, the following subprojects are currently investigated: * Cooperative information retrieval using mobile agents (Collaboration with Daimler-Benz, Stuttgart) * ATOMAS: Transaction oriented open multiagent systems (Collaboration with Tandem Computers Inc. CA) * ASAP: A system for the archivation and dissemination of electronic documents (SRF-Project) * AIDA: Infrastructure for mobile agents, in particular for communication and migration of agents (DFG-Project)