Managing Computer Lab-Mobile Agent Approach

Mobile agent is a potential method and approach in addressing many issues and problems in managing and maintaining computer labs. In educational institutions, a computer lab consists of many computers used by students and staff, and each institution has many computer labs. Maintaining these public computers is the task given to a few personnel such as computer technician. The technician has to move from one computer to another to do routine task such as running antivirus. The task is tedious and tiresome. Mobile agent has the potential and capabilities to perform the task, where mobile agent can be programmed to do task which is usually done by computer labs' technician. The mobile agent will move from one computer to another in the lab via computer network to execute the maintenance task in each computer autonomously. This work attempts to use mobile agent as a tool to manage computer labs in many aspects including reliability. security,
technology and effectiveness. The results from this research show that mobile agents can be an efficient tool for managing computer labs.