How Agents Work

Question 1

Agents

Answer 1

* programs that do your bidding automatically

   \* On Internet, commonly called spiders, robots (bots), and knowbots

Question 2

Problems that agents can cause:

Answer 2

• overload web servers by swamping with too many requests in too short a time
• ad space that is seen only by computer via robot, both advertisers and website suffer
• robots.txt- solution to describe areas off limits to robots

Question 3

news agent

Answer 3

you fill out a form saying which type of news you’re interested in an don what schedule you want your news delivered. Based on that information, at preset intervals, the news agent dials into news sites around the Internet and downloads news stories to your computer, where you can read them as HTML pages

Question 4

shopping agent

Answer 4

let you search entire Internet for best bargains. On Web, you fill out a form detailing the product you want to buy. When you submit the form, the shopping agent launches programs that search through a variety of shopping sites and databases on the Internet for best prices and sends back to you the links to the sites.

Question 5

web maintenance spiders