AgentSys: A Mobile Agent System for Digital Media Access and Interaction on an Internet

Mobile agents have emerged as a new computing alternative and are proving to be more flexible and dynamic than the classical client-server model. In the mobile agent model the program is sent to and runs on the remote site, thereby operating closer to and more interactively with the remote document resource. AgentSys is a mobile agent system that implements the protocols necessary to allow agents to autonomously roam upon a network of digital resources, collect information intermittently, and return to the user with results. While the burden on the user to search out and negotiate for data is reduced, AgentSys requires protocols at several levels. This paper proposes (i) an agent-stack to enable an Internetbased mobile agent system, (ii) the protocols necessary for agent communications, and (iii) a profound new way of thinking of documents within the mobile agent paradigm.