AGENT SYSTEM, COMMUNICATION METHOD, EQUIPMENT, AND RECORDING MEDIUM

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To continue operation by driving an agent in a network including a virtual device and the physical device even when a physical device fails. SOLUTION: The physical device 2 including an agent 7 inside and a virtual device 3 are connected to the network 4. Each device has a list storage part 6 storing an agent reference address list relating each agent name to its address. Each agent refers to the reference address list at the time of communicating with another agent and transmits the referred data to the other agent. When there are agents (Age 2) in both the physical and virtual devices, a copy of the agent is periodically transferred from the physical device 2 to the virtual device 3. When the copy is not transferred from the physical device 2, the device 2 is regarded as failure device and the agent (Age 2) of the virtual device 3 is activated.