User agent

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In computing, a user agent is software (a software agent) that is acting on behalf of a user.

For example, an email reader is a mail user agent, and in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the term user agent refers to both end points of a communications session.

In many cases, a user agent acts as a client in a network protocol used in communications within a client–server distributed computing system.

In particular, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) identifies the client software originating the request, using a "User-Agent" header, even when the client is not operated by a user.

The SIP protocol (based on HTTP) followed this usage.

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