P2P Agent Platform: Implementation and Testing

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing, a novel paradigm for distributed information technology, is currently receiving ever increasing interest of both academia and industry. Recent efforts intended to integrate multi-agent and P2P architectures is one of such very promising new opportunities. Indeed, multiagent system (MAS) may be thought of as a multitude of autonomous entities, and, therefore, structuring the agents as a P2P network of nodes may result in architecture providing new dimension for design of open MAS composed of highly transient population of agents. The paper presents implementation of P2P Agent platform providing transparent interaction of distributed P2P agents. The developed P2P platform implements the basic mandatory components assumed by the functional architecture proposed by FIPA Nomadic Agents Working Group. This implementation is supported by search mechanism of underlying P2P infrastructure. The platform verification is done via prototyping P2P ground object recognition MAS in which the agents situated on top of the distributed instances of the P2P Agent platform provide classification services.