A Fault Tolerant Mobile Agent Information Retrieval System

Abstract

Problem statement: Most of the information retrieval systems used only client-server architectures. The client-server model though powerful, had some limitations. In mobile computing environment which has both wired network and wireless networks with limited communication capabilities, the performance of the system was very low. Approach: Mobile agents are considered a suitable technology to develop applications such as information retrieval system for mobile computing environment. Mobile agents are autonomous and dynamic entities that can migrate between various nodes in the network. They offer many advantages over traditional design methodologies like: reduction in network load, overcoming network latency and disconnected operations. Since the mobile agents do not need continuous communication with the mobile host, they are not affected by the sudden disconnection of wireless network and the situation of turning mobile host off for power saving. In order to get the complete benefit of mobile agent system, the system must be fault tolerant. In the context of mobile agents, fault-tolerance prevents a partial or complete loss of the agent. Results: Our system in mobile computing environment ensured that the agent arrived at its destination with result and performance of the system improved by the way of reduction in the response time. And also, the system allowed sending more requests by the way of creating many mobile agents without affecting the performance. Conclusion: Our research compared the performance of client-server architecture and fault tolerant mobile agent information retrieval system and proved that our system solved the limitations faced by the client server architecture. The system can also be extended to adhoc networks.