The environment of nomadic computing is very different from that of
traditional distributed systems today. The variety of mobile
workstations, handheld devices, and smart phones, which nomadic users
use to access data services in the Internet, increases at growing rate.
The outcome is new demands for adaptability of data services. Agent
technology is one of the software solutions that may be used to fulfill
the demand of "anytime-anywhere-anyhow" access to data services. The
research project Monads addresses some of the fundamental challenges in
supporting nomadic applications: adaptability to available computing and
communication resources that vary in tempo-spatial space and short-term
(1-30 minutes) predictions of available resources. In addition to
adaptability and predictions, efficient agent communication in wireless
environments is a mandatory prerequisite.
