So what benefit will agents bring, and are they worth the trouble? Well they’re
worth it as they allow us to migrate processing away from busy servers towards
the client. They also tend to carry out their tasks quietly and can turn raw data
into a form that the server can quickly use. So what's the next logical step in
client-server networks: agent technology, and what’s the next natural step
in agent technology: mobile agents. These helpful little agents like to work independently.
They are dispatched to clients, and then work quietly gathering information, and
sending it back whenever required, or whenever a user connects back onto the Internet.
They are thus extremely useful when users are also mobile, and use
notebook computers to perform their business.
The research in the School of Computing is looking at
several ways that agents could be applied in the systems
of the future, this includes enhanced security methods
and the use of mobile agents to enhance network management.
