This unit will be offered as part of the Master of Network Computing degree offered by the School of Network Computing to meet the demands for graduates with expertise in developing distributed computing applications using the mobile agent paradigm. Mobile agents are a class of software agents that possess the characteristic of mobility. They are software agents that have the ability to move from host to host of their own accord. Mobile agents are emerging as an important paradigm in distributed computing. It is both an active research area and a suitable technology for deploying applications in several domains such as Information Retrieval on the World Wide Web, Electronic Commerce, Workflows and other distributed computing applications such as Distributed Data Mining. The design methodologies and programming aspects of mobile agent systems are considerably different to traditional distributed computing techniques such as Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs), sockets programming and distributed object technologies (CORBA and DCOM). The principal motivations for introducing this subject are the emerging relevance of this paradigm in distributed computing and the distinct design and development techniques necessary to use this paradigm. These motivations necessitate the inclusion of this topic in the MNC unit offerings. Further, mobile agents is an active research area in the School of Network Computing and this unit would provide an introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of this paradigm to Honours and Masters students who wish to pursue research projects in this area.

To include Malaysia campus as an offering option, in line with request from the School of IT, Monash Malaysia. The unit will be made available as part of the electives into the MIT(minor thesis) program. (SIT@MUM)

The unit will be made available as part of the electives into the MIT(minor thesis) program at the Malaysia campus. (SIT@MUM)

ASCED CODE 029999 Information Technology not elsewhere classified.

The unit presents the theoretical concepts, applications and research issues of mobile software agents. The unit discusses mobile software agents with respect to their use in different application domains and the techniques to design and develop mobile agent applications (including a comparative evaluation of different toolkits/development environments). The unit also focuses on the theoretical aspects and research issues in mobile agents such as communication, coordination and security. The specific topics covered in this unit include: Introduction to intelligent software agents (Definitions and classifications, agent architectures and multi- agent systems), Introduction to mobile software agents, Mobile agent applications (e.g. WWW Information Retrieval, Netwrok Management, Electronic Commerce, Distributed Data Mining), Design and development of mobile agent systems, Mobile agent toolkits, Mobile agent interactions (communication, coordination and negotiation) and mobile agent security.

This unit will be offered in an on-campus enrolment mode.

Students are expected to spend an average of 12 hours per week on this unit. The breakdown of time is: 2 hours per week: Lecture attendance 2 hours per week: Scheduled tutorials 8 hours per week: Read research papers, complete practical work and assignments.

2 lecture-hours per week in a hi-tech theatre (SIT@MUM)

None, labs required see below

Standard PC lab rooms required for 2 hours per week, for 13 weeks.

Availability of open access lab for private study to review topic materials, Read research papers and complete practical work and assignments (SIT@MUM)

One Lecturer plus one Tutor for each tutorial group of twenty students Subject Co-ordinator: Shonali Krishnaswamy

Will be considered when teaching are assigned before the start of each semester (SIT@MUM)

• Software Title:
• Vendor:
• Version:
• OS: MS Windows XP ( ) and/or LINUX ( )
• License Details: (A valid software license certificate/s or Vendor permission must be available upon request if the software is to be installed for teaching)
• Are we currently licensed: Yes ( ) or No ( ) (If unsure, please check with your local IT support )
• If (Yes), who is the contact person for this software?:
• If (No), will the software license be arranged by: Staff member requesting the software ( ) or Technical Services* ( ) ? *If the latter is selected, please discuss your requirement/s with myself ASAP, prior to finalising your request, as there could be financial or resourcing implications.
• Is the software to be installed and accessed from a: Client/Workstation ( ), or Server ( ) ?
• Type of license: Site License ( ), Freeware ( ), FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) ( ), Shareware ( ), Lab based ( ) # of Licenses needed ____
• In what week will you commence using the software in class? Semester 1 (Week ___ ) and/or Semester 2 (Week ___ ):
• Nominated Staff For Acceptance Testing Software: (Name) (Phone) (Email)
• Additional Information: Special Requirements, Software Configuration/Installation Requirements, etc:

Visual Studio 2005 (or 2003 with pocket pc/smarphone addons) AND EtherYatri.NET framework

Aglets Software Development Kit v2

JDK 1.2 or later

The Library Impact Statement is under preparation and will be forwarded to the Faculty.

Will be provided for by THOL Library in Malaysia (SIT@MUM)

100% Faculty of Information Technology

100% School of IT, Malaysia (SIT@MUM)

None that I am aware of (Hiew)

This unit is taught entirely by the School of Network Computing. The subject proposal has been discussed with Assoc. Prof. Arkady Zaslavsky (School of Computer Science & Software Engineering) who is the co-ordinator for the subject "Mobile and Distributed Computing Systems" (CSE5501). He agreed that there is no overlap between CSE5501 and this unit.

The unit is taught at the School of IT, Malaysia as an elective for the MIT(minor thesis) program.