Mobile Agents: Are They a Good Idea?

Mobile agents are programs, typically written in a script language, which may be dispatched from a client computer and transported to a remote server computer for execution. Several authors have suggested that mobile agents offer an important new method of performing transactions and information retrieval in networks. Other writers have pointed out, however, that mobile agents introduce severe concerns for security. We consider the advantages offered by mobile agents and assess them against alternate methods of achieving the same function. We conclude that, while the individual advantages of agents do not represent an overwhelming motivation for their adoption, the creation of a pervasive agent framework facilitates a very large number of network services and applications.