Moving an Agent

The protocol used to move an Agent is very complex. The handshake between the two systems exists of six method calls. For most of the methods it is not necessary to put them into one single call. This makes it all more dependent on a good connection which should not be required for a Mobile Agent System. Such a System is specially designed for minimizing the use of communication and the dependence of a good connection. The loading of classes for example can be done by a designated ClassLoader which would be the way it should be implemented in Java. The use of the RMI ClassLoader has the advantage to be able to load classes from FTP / HTTP server, but it is better to use a class loader which is derived from the normal ClassLoader of Java. It is not difficult to implement the loading of classes from a FTP / HTTP server using the good network classes of Java. It can also be that the classes are available in the System for example they are in the CLASSPATH or cached. The last call, endOfReceive, is obsolete when using exceptions to point an error during transfer or startingtypeset@protect @@footnote SF@gobble@opt The sender platform would not be able to recognize that an error occurred when starting the Agent on the other side, because the end of the handshake was sent already before starting the TAgent on the target System. .