Fault-Tolerant Scheme for Matrix Hop Mobile Agent (MHMA) System

Mobile agent-based computing is an attractive model for distributed computation environment. A mobile agent has the unique ability to transfer from one host to another in the network. In multi-hop mobile agent system, the agent brings the produced offer from various remote hosts to its owner only after completing the visit to many remote hosts. Carrying the offer gathered from the preceding hosts to the succeeding hosts requires much security mechanisms to protect the offer from the malicious hosts, and also the owner has to wait for the arrival of offer until the mobile agent finishes its travel. To overcome this, an alternative model has been developed called matrix hop mobile agent (MHMA) system in which the mobile agent sends the offer collected from the host to the owner before it migrates to the next host. This research work proposes a new fault tolerant mechanism for MHMA to identify the malicious host and to protect the agent from various attacks, including colluded attack. In this proposed model, the owner calculates the expected waiting time for the arrival of offer from each remote host, using the transmission cost. If the offer does not reach the owner within the waiting time, the owner identifies the agent’s failure and retransmits the agent directly to the remote host. The implementation of this model enhances the performance of the MMHA in all kinds of e-service applications.