A Mobile Agent Model: Applications for

E-Commerce

Anne Nguyen, Ian Stewart and Xinfeng Yang

School of Information Technology

Griffith University

PMB 50 Gold Coast Mail Centre QLD 9726

E-mail: A.Nguyen@gu.edu.au

Abstract

Mobile agents have the potential to radically change the way people conduct business via e-commerce. From a resource management perspective, they can perform many repetitive, time-consuming tasks, thus freeing up human labour for more strategic work. From a technology point of view, they can help to meet the exploding need for more bandwidth. They can even operate in conditions where Internet connections are only intermittently reliable.

This paper presents a simple mobile agent model, and reviews applications of the technology in e-commerce. It also considers a number of important security issues that must be addressed before mobile agents can become widely accepted.

system model, mobile agent, e-commerce application, network security