This paper presents an evaluation of authentication mechanisms for mobile agents on top of a Java environment. In these mechanisms, the authentication of mobile agents is controlled by the mobile-agents platform using digital signature and a Public Key Infrastructure. An evaluation of these mechanisms has been conducted. The measurements give the cost of the basic mechanisms involved in the implementation of authentication mechanisms integrated within a mobile-agent based platform.

A prototype of a mobile agent system and the authentication mechanisms has been implemented. The implementation experiments have shown the feasibility and the advantage of these mechanisms. The measurements results show insignificant performance overhead of the mechanisms. This paper presents our implementation, a performance analysis and the lessons learned.