Malleable Services

Deploying distributed services over a complex network topology presents a challenge, one of mapping the objects to locations in an optimal manner. This mapping needs to be dynamic, taking current network conditions into consideration. Remapping services is manual-intensive, requires operator effort and may result in service downtime. The Mojave project described here investigates an architecture for implementing malleable (auto-configuring) services using reactive and mobile agents. In contrast to past efforts, Mojave views agents as a wrapper technology implemented over a Jini-tuplespace based architecture. The paper describes the Mojave architecture and implementation, experiences in building an adaptive systems manager application, and benefits of the Mojave architecture for thin-client computing.