An efficient and secure agent code distribution service

Mobile agents (MAs) are autonomous computing entities that dwell in agent platforms and have the ability to move to different locations as needed. They are typically composed of code, data, and a state. The performance of MA migrations is always penalized by the need of carrying these components to each visited location. In contrast to the agent data and state, the agent code is static during the whole agent life. Therefore, optimizing the agent code management, the agent migration performance can be improved. The main contribution of this article is the definition of a global cache service to efficiently and securely deal with the distribution of agent code. An implementation of the service has been developed, and its benefits have been extensively demonstrated by a set of performance tests carried out in different scenarios. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.