Abstract: An agent is installed on a computing device of a vehicle (e.g., an ECU); the agent receives messages from an application installed on the same computing device. The computing device is connected to a gateway computing device via a physical communication channel (e.g., CAN bus or Ethernet cable). When the gateway agent receives a message from the application, it converts the message into a different protocol based on a mapping of the protocols to physical communication channels. The message is sent to a gateway agent at the gateway device, where it is converted back to the original protocol so the message can be processed/transmitted to the internet. By using an agent, the in-vehicle application does not need to know about the vehicle's network architecture or changes to it in order to access the internet.