which allow it to determine what to do when the execution is

restarted in another host. The mobile agent programming paradigm

overcomes some of the limits of traditional distributed processing
techniques, which are typically based on the client/server paradigm [3]. In
fact, in a mobile agent approach, the agent moves close to the data to be
processed, thus eliminating the network tra c due to messages (excluding
the initial mi- gration), and allowing the execution of operations dynamically
defined by the user.
A typical case concerns client/server applications in which the
client must retrieve some data from the server and operate complex
filtering operations on such data; by moving an agent containing the
procedures that deal with filtering, only the data that actually concern the
client are sent through the network, with a considerable reduction of
communication costs [9]. Besides, a permanent connection between client
and server is not necessary in such scheme; the agent, once it is sent to the
site of destination, can continue doing its operations and can communicate
the results as soon as the client connects to the network again.
Even for monitoring a distributed computation system, we
think that the mobility of some code modules can contribute to develop a
more e ective and exible architecture. In particular, the main advantages
that can be obtained by using an agent paradigm concern the following
points:
Reduction of the network load. The remote analysis of
monitoring data causes a considerable amount of data to be transferred in
the network. Conversely, by including the code performing such analysis in
an agent, there is no longer need for transferring raw data on the network,
since the interaction takes place on the remote resource directly. The data
transferred on the network are only the ones actually needed.
Opportunity of performing operations of monitoring data
analysis by means of algorithms that can be customized by the user and
can be dynamical ly executed on-demand. If a user develops his/her own
algorithm for a customized analysis of monitoring data, he/she will only
need to develop an appropriate agent, which will be dynami- cally executed
on any system host where the user wishes to execute it, with no need for
complex installation procedures.
Filtering of monitoring data at several abstraction levels,
without high overheads for the system. Each agent positioned on a remote
resource may perform a ”continuous monitoring” of the resource. However,
in some cases, the information that the user needs con- cern average
values calculated on di erent time intervals. By using