Patent ID: 8321495

Claim:
A method for ensuring that only a single instance of a plurality of mobile intelligent agents performs processing in a processing host of a plurality of processing hosts in a Byzantine fault-tolerant computing network, comprising: creating, by a processor of a computation requester, a first mobile intelligent agent, said first mobile intelligent agent configured to perform a specific computational task in at least one processing host of the plurality of processing hosts, and leave a trace in the at least one processing host when said specific task has been performed by said at least one processing host; interrogating an environment in the processing host for presence of a sibling mobile intelligent agent or a trace left by a said sibling mobile intelligent agent, said sibling mobile intelligent agent comprising a duplicate of said first mobile intelligent agent created by the computation requester to perform a same said specific computational task and to leave a same said trace as said first mobile intelligent agent in other processing hosts of the plurality of processing hosts in the Byzantine network; responsive to detecting a presence of said sibling mobile intelligent agent or a trace left by said sibling mobile intelligent agent in the processing host, ceasing further execution by said first mobile intelligent agent in the processing host to prevent repeating performance of said same specific task in the processing host; and causing onward transmission of said first mobile intelligent agent to another of the plurality of processing hosts in the Byzantine fault-tolerant computing network to perform the specific computational task; and responsive to not detecting the presence of said sibling mobile intelligent agent or the trace left behind said sibling mobile intelligent agent, executing said first intelligent agent in the processing host, leaving the trace in the environment of the processing host, and returning a result of said executing in the processing host to said computation requester.