What Is A Mobile Agent?

A mobile agent is a type of software agent characterized by autonomy, social ability, learning, and mobility. It combines computer software and data with the ability to autonomously migrate from one computer to another within a network.

How Does a Mobile Agent Work?

A mobile agent can transport its state from one environment to another while keeping the data intact. It can then "pick up where it left off" and perform appropriately in the new environment. Movement is accomplished through data duplication by suspending execution, saving the current state, transporting the saved state to a new host, and resuming execution from the saved state.

Benefits & Advantages of a Mobile Agent

Compared to conventional agents, mobile agents have these advantages:

• The ability to create relocatable data bundles that can help reduce network load.
• Parallel processing on multiple networks through asynchronous execution to increase efficiency.
• High tolerance to network faults because it can stay operational even when a client is disconnected from the server.
• The ability to separate agents' actions from the host environment to support dynamic adaptation.
• Flexible and efficient maintenance since an agent's action can be changed simply by updating the source.

Types of Companies That Can Use a Mobile Agent

Mobile agents can benefit companies that need to deploy complex applications in mobile data computing, eCommerce, networking, manufacturing, and scientific computing. Businesses that use data-intensive applications to leverage information from remote databases or real-time sensors can also take advantage of mobile agents. It helps you process a large amount of data and distinguish signal from noise. It can also notify you when data that meets certain criteria is discovered to facilitate analytics and reporting. Mobile agents are used in telecommunication technologies including active networks, interactive QoS (quality of service), network management, and feature interactions.