| Software architectures based on mobile agents are gaining popularity but they are often restricted to specific environments. A mobile agent can move only within a cluster of networked sites that have been provided with the agent mobility infrastructures. Agent-based service is confined within this cluster, and it is not directly available to the web user. A traditional way to make agent-based service Internet accessible is through HTTP messaging. However this is a hybrid application and requires costly additions to the agent system.; This thesis proposes a new approach—an MAS applet. In this approach, the agent is able to move to the user's machine; therefore the user can interact with the agent directly, and the user-agent interaction cost is reduced. The applet-based architecture extends the bound of the cluster to the user's machine, and expands the agent-based service to the Internet. Two implementations are shown in this thesis: the “heavyweight” applet implementation and the “lightweight” applet implementation. This thesis shows how these two implementations realize an applet-based architecture. The methods and principles are demonstrated on a single agent execution environment, but they are applicable to a large number of other agent execution environments. Advantages and disadvantages of both approaches are discussed. |
