subagent

1. (law) A person employed by an agent to transact the whole, or a part, of the business entrusted to the latter.Examples: "Where a subagent is appointed pursuant to actual or implied authority from the principal the principal is liable directly to the subagent for his compensation ."; "Where a subagent is appointed by authority of the principal, the subagent is, so far as relates to third persons, the agent of the principal, and the acts of the subagent are binding upon the principal;"; "Confusing relationships, disclosures, and conflicts arise if the licensee acts as subagent with one buyer and buyer's agent with another buyer on the same property."

2. (computing) An autonomous process that is launched by and communicates with another agent in order to handle part of the task that is the objective of that other agent.Examples: "On a UNIX system, the coordinating agent and subagent processes will have different names."; "An SNMP subagent supports its own MIB, which might be an RFC-architected MIV, or might be a proprietary (referered to as enterprise-specific) MIB. For example, a TCP/IP subagent would most likely support the IP, ICMP, TCP, UDP, and Interface groups defined in RFC 1213."; "Originally, the purpose of creating an AI subagent will be to enhance new horizons in protocol and use it to help protect human agents in the field."