1. Scenario Based Interaction Model for a Mobile Agent System
Sadia Ashraf, Naveed Ejaz, Adnan A Farooqui,
Kashif Zareef, Sajid Minhas
Department of Computer Science
Military College of Signals Rawalpindi – 46000
(National University of Sciences and Technology - PAKISTAN)

2. Outline Mobile Agents & their Applications The Scenario
What's an interaction model
Proposed Architecture
Conclusion

3. Mobile Agent
“an agent is an encapsulated computer system situated in some environment and capable of flexible, autonomous action in that environment in order to meet its design objectives”
Agents are autonomous
Agents have clear interfaces and well defined goals
Have sensors and effectors
Agents are reactive as well as pro-active
A mobile agent is epitomized by the fact that in addition to above traits it also has the ability to migrate

4. Mobile Agent
Mobile agents offer a number of advantages in comparison to traditional distributed computing paradigms…
Low bandwidth consumption
Persistence
Fault tolerance
Scalability
Asynchronous
These are certain characteristics of mobile agents which make these more suitable in a number of situations as compared to traditional distributed computing models.

5. Scenario: Stationary Demand and Purchase System
Stationary Demand Collector
NUST HQ
1. Agent Dem_Collector created at the NUST HQ
Agent
2. Agent migrated
to Host MCS
Agent
3. Working at MCS
MCS
EME
Agent
4. Agent migrated
to Host NIIT
Agent
NIIT

6. Modeling the Agent
Interaction Model
Failure Model
Security Model

7. Interaction Model
Study of how communication (information flow) and coordination (synchronization and ordering of activities) takes place between the various processes involved in a system?
Modeling the system around the interactions requires specifying
an interaction protocol
the set of actors and
their composition

8. Proposed Architecture
Mobile Agent
Agent Host

9. Proposed Architecture
A mobile agent is a serializable object
Passport - identification number
Itinerary List - List of all hosts that the mobile agent needs to visit
Data - Required by the agent for its execution. Also the data that the agent collects from the various hosts during its life cycle
Code
Event Handlers - executed in case of errors
Goals and Status Information - The tasks that the mobile agent needs to perform and their status
Log File - To log all of their actions
Log File
Goals and Status Information
Event Handlers
Code
Data
Itinerary List
Agent Passport
Its data and state are marshaled (flattened and encoded) so that it can be sent from one host to another
On the destination host, the object is deserialized with its execution state restored to when it was serialized
The object can then resume execution on the newly arrived host

10. Proposed Architecture: Mobile Agent
Outside World
Authentication Module
Data Collection Module
Error Handling Module
Itinerary Module
Communication Module
Data Placement Module
Registration
Module
Coordinator

11. Proposed Architecture: Agent Host

12. Proposed Architecture: Agent Host
Authentication
Service
Registration
Event
Manager
Serialization and De -
serialization
Module
Agent Execution
Environment
Transport
Communication Layer
Agent Manager
Server
Resources
Outside World

13. Proposed Architecture: Life CycleUn -
marshalling
Authentication
Registration
Obtaining
Resource
Handlers
Execution
Accessing
Resources
Events
Registration and
Notification
Marshalling
Arrival
Migration
Departure

14. Concluding Remarks
We divided the agent and the agent host into a number of principal constituents. This subdivision lends the following properties to the proposed architecture:
Parallelism
Configurability
Reusability

15. Concluding Remarks
The agent based system has been studied purely from the perspective of interactions involved between the various components of the system. Security and failure concerns are not handled as they were out of the scope of this paper.

16. Concluding Remarks
The main advantage of looking at an agent based system in this perspective is that it identifies the key components or the actors needed in the system.
Once these actors have been identified the type of communication that takes place between these actors can be easily ascertained.
This leads to the type of protocol or communication rules which should be followed by the parties engaged in the communication.
Hence, overall reducing the complexity involved in understanding multifaceted distributed systems.

17. The End
Questions ?