Mobile agent based system for mobility support

#This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §§119 and/or 365 to 19992605 filed in Norway on May 31, 1999; the entire content of which is hereby incorporated by reference.

#Ideally a user should be able to access the same applications/services and all his files or documents in exactly the same way, in the same presentation, with the same look-and-feel that he has personalized, no matter when and where he is or no matter what terminal he is using. Indeed, ideally the technology should be able to adapt to the user instead of requiring that the user must adapt to it, as the situation is today.

#As depicted in FIG. 1, ideal user mobility means the ubiquitous availability of the user's applications, his data files and his user profiles independently of the terminal in use. The applications comprise both the communication ones such as voice phone, video phone, conferencing, etc and the computing ones such as word processor, spread-sheet, mail, specific software, etc. The applications can use one medium or multiple media such as voice, video and data. The data files are of all types, either structured documents or unstructured raw data files. They can contain data for different types of media such as text, sound, picture or video. The user profiles capture the preferences, subscribed services and personalization that the user has chosen. Each user may have several profiles, for example one main profile for the main presentation and one for each application.

#The invention will be described in detail below with reference to the appended drawings.

#FIG. 1 is a schematic drawing depicting a situation with ideal user mobility including ubiquitous availability of applications, data files and user profiles.

#FIG. 2 depicts mobility support in GSM (prior art).

#In this section we describe our invention which relates an architecture of an agent-based system that improves the support of mobility.

#The whole system is composed of different sites. A site is governed by an administrator and can be composed of one of several networks (subnets) of nodes (hosts). Every site has a SA (site Agent) assuming the administration function. It has the responsibility of giving access rights to the agents, garbage collect finished agents and make sure that the security model is not violated. It also has the responsibility to retract, i.e. to move a user agent according to the need of the user.

#A user has subscription at a site. He is represented by a UA (User Agent), which acts on behalf of him and takes care of everything when the user is moving. The UA controls three tasks agents: the AA (Application Agent) in charge of the user applications, the DA in charge of the user data (document files) and the PA (Profile Agent) in charge of the user's profiles.