Intelligent mobile agents in large distributed autonomous cooperative systems

A large distributed autonomous cooperative system is a system that provides fundamental services for integrating high-level services in a large distributed system with local autonomy for individual system platforms and processes. This paper discusses the role and the functions of Intelligent Mobile Agents (IMAs) in large distributed autonomous cooperative systems. Rather than providing services to a user at the application level, IMAs considered in this paper are deemed an integral part of system level software and perform tasks that are considered central to the distributed system. A variety of solutions to problems that are inherent to the distributed nature of the computing infrastructure may be implemented through a system of IMAs. These problems include, but are by no means limited to, load balancing, scheduling, information retrieval and management, distributed decision support, routing and ̄ow control, security and intrusion detection. In this paper we discuss some of characteristics of IMA based systems central to solving some of these problems. The e€ectiveness of IMAs in large distributed systems clearly depends on the design and implementation of the underlying IMA architecture. This paper discusses the features that must be provided by the IMA infrastructure in support of IMAs that are an integral part of the large distributed autonomous cooperative system. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.