What is Transparent Proxy

Mobile applications are growing in importance due to the increasing popularity of mobile devices and the development of wireless and mobile networks, which allow fast and affordable communications. This scenario opens up new opportunities but also presents a number of limitations that prevent the development of its entire potential. On the other hand, mobile agents are an emerging software technology that has been proposed as a way of dealing with the difficulties present in mobile environments, such as the instability of network connections, or the limited computing capabilities of mobile devices. However, despite their multiple advantages, some practical questions arise. Mobile agents need an execution platform well suited to the mobile environment to allow agents to deploy all their capabilities. Are the existing agent platforms ready to accomplish this task? What features should they have to ease the development of mobile and distributed applications in this environment? In this chapter, the authors discuss in detail all these questions and survey the most popular agent platforms to find out how they can be used in mobile environments.