Adaptive Mobile Agent Computing: Agent Mobility, Interoperability and Communication in a Ubicomp World

The mobile agent system is widely considered a rising and promising distributed computing paradigm; however, it also faces many challenges, which lie in the lack of applications, security, infrastructure, and standards. On the other hand, ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) based on Jini technology is becoming the de facto paradigm of dynamic distributed system. This research introduces the current development of mobile agent computing and Jini technology, analyzes the factors hampering full acceptance and exploitation of mobile agents and the limitations of Jini, and describes ongoing research on JatWing¿a Jini-enabled mobile agent computing framework using distributed enhanced tuple spaces as its underlying architecture. JatWing aims to facilitate the practical application of mobile agent technology by accommodating Jini infrastructure as well as offering easy communication and collaboration, fault tolerance, agent tracking, and disconnected computing mechanism. The JatWing framework consists of two network middlewares: AgentStation and AgentBase, both of which are built on commercial tuple spaces with a few lightweight daemons at the background.