Mobile Agents: A Key for Effective Pervasive Computing Roberto Speicys Cardoso & Fabio Kon University of São Paulo - Brazil

2 Pervasive Computing Properties Networking – unstable and energy consuming Heterogeneous Dynamic and Complex Seamless integration between computers and the real world

3 Why Mobile Agents? Reduce network load Flexible Can perform tasks on behalf of the administrator or application Use of mobile agents can lead to advantages in terms of performance, flexibility and escalability.

4 Proposed solution We propose a mobile-agent enabled solution for: System adaptation based on service migration Automatic updates for software components QoS negotiation

5 System Architecture Manages 3 aspects Adaptation Software Evolution Quality of Service Negotiation

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10 Service Adaptation Dynamic environment Services must be very responsive Computer power available Services implemented as mobile agents Monitor the environment to detect changes on resource availability Migrates or spans a clone to a more suitable host

11 Component Updates High number of devices New component versions must be pushed to the devices Components must be able to pull other components on which they depend Mobile agents encapsulate component data and commands for installation They can traverse a pre-defined path of nodes, stoping on each node

12 Quality of Service Negotiation Multimedia will be a central part of the user interface Benefits of service migration cannot be lost QoS negotiation may require long periods of connected communication Mobile agents can avoid connected communication They can roam the nodes to negotiate QoS contracts

13 Current Status Service capable of adapt itself is under development, using Aglets A framework developed in our research group will be used for activity monitoring A prototype will be ready by the end of the first semester of 2003

14 Related Work one.world (University of Washington) Doesn’t provide mechanisms for component updates or means QoS negotiation Pervasive Computing (IBM) Doesn’t provide mechanisms for resource reservation or service migration for adaptation Gaia (University of Illinois) Approach complementary

15 Conclusion Mobile agents are a powerful tool for pervasive computing environments They are a key factor to increase the flexibility, scalability and performance of such systems The ongoing research on pervasive computing is neglecting these aspects