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communication but lack support for P2P technology.
Therefore, there are few agent-based P2P applica-
tions. PeerDB(Ng et al., 2003) is one of them, how-
ever agent technology is only used to assist query
processing while in the proposed e-Learning system
it is used not only for interactiveness but also for mi-
gration of the functionality of the system.
Edutella is P2P network for exchanging infor-
mation about learning objects(Nejdl et al., 2002).
Edutella is based on RDF(Resource Description
Framework), which is a framework for representing
information in the Web. Consequently, Edutella does
not intend to receive user’s response. In contrast, that
is one of main goal of the proposed system and it is
achieved through agent technology.
6 CONCLUSION
Since existing asynchronous WBT systems are based
on the client/server model, they have problems of
scalability and robustness. The proposed e-Learning
system solves these problems in decentralized man-
ner through both P2P technology and mobile agent
technology. The agent migrates using HTTP as trans-
fer protocol and XML as encoding format itself. The
user interface program of the proposed system is built
on Squeak so that it obtains much interactiveness
and flexibility. Performance simulations suggest that
the proposed e-Learning system has higher scalability
than ordinary concentrated WBT systems have. More
work needs to be done in the evaluation of the robust-
ness of the proposed system. In addition, the expan-
sion to provide popular functions of ordinary concen-
trated WBT systems for communication between the
instructor and the learners and among the learners by
means of email and BBS (Bulletin Board System), in
decentralized manner, is left for future work.
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