Document Type

Technical Report

Publication Date

10-3-1998

Technical Report Number

PCS-TR98-331

Abstract

Mobile agents are programs capable of migrating from one host machine to another. We propose that mobile agents purchase resource access rights from host machines thereby establishing a market for computational resources and giving agents a metric to evenly distribute themselves throughout the network. Market participation requires quantitative information about resource consumption to define demand and calculate utility. We create a formal utility model to derive user-demand functions, allowing agents to efficiently plan expenditure and deal with price fluctuations. By quantifying demand and utility, resource owners can precisely set a value for a good. We simulate our model in a mobile agent scheduling environment and show how mobile agents may use server prices to distribute themselves evenly throughout a network.

Comments

Original version in May 1998; revised October 3, 1998.

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