Mobile-Agent versus Client/Server Performance: Scalability in an Information-Retrieval Task

Dartmouth Technical Report TR2001-386

	Robert S. Gray
	David Kotz
	Ronald A. Peterson
	Peter Gerken
	Martin Hofmann
	Daria Chacon
	Greg Hill
	Niranjan Suri

Date: January 2001

URL (compressed postscript): <http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2001-386.ps.Z> (1076KB)

URL (PDF): <http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2001-386.pdf> (1160KB)

Abstract:
 Mobile agents are programs that can jump from host
 to host in the network, at times and to places of
 their own choosing. Many groups have developed
 mobile-agent software platforms, and several
 mobile-agent applications. Experiments show that
 mobile agents can, among other things, lead to
 faster applications, reduced bandwidth demands, or
 less dependence on a reliable network
 connection. There are few if any studies of the
 scalability of mobile-agent servers, particularly as
 the number of clients grows. We present some recent
 performance and scalability experiments that compare
 three mobile-agent platforms with each other and
 with a traditional client/server approach. The
 experiments show that mobile agents often outperform
 client/server solutions, but also demonstrate the
 deep interaction between environmental and
 application parameters. The three mobile-agent
 platforms have similar behavior but their absolute
 performance varies with underlying implementation
 choices. 

Note:
 Revised version appeared in Mobile Agents 2001.
 See <a href=http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/papers/#gray:scalability>here</a>.