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This paper describes an abstract framework for itinerant agents that can be used to implement secure, remote applications in large, public networks such as the Internet or the IBM Global Network. Itinerant agents are programs, dispatched from a source computer, that roam among a set of networked servers until they accomplish their task. This is an extension to the client / server model in which the client sends a portion of itself to the server for execution. An additional feature of itinerant agents is their ability to migrate from server to server, perhaps seeking one that can help with the user's task or perhaps collecting information from all of them. A major focus of the paper is the Agent Meeting Point, an abstraction that supports the interaction of agents with each other and server based resources.
By: David Chess, Benjamin Grosof, Colin Harrison, David Levine, Colin Parris and Gene Tsudik (IBM Zurich)
Published in: IEEE Personal Communications, volume 2, (no 5), pages 34-49 in 1995
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