Cooperation strategies for agent-based P2P systems

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Penserini, Loris | Liu, Lin | Mylopoulos, John | Panti, Maurizio | Spalazzi, Luca

Affiliations: Computer Science Institute, University of Ancona, Via Brecce Bianche, 60131 – Ancona, Italy. E-mail: {pense,panti,spalazzi}@inform.unian.it | Computer Science Department, University of Toronto, 40 St. George Street, M5S 2E4 – Toronto, Ontario, Canada. E-mail: {liu,jm}@cs.toronto.edu

Note: [] Corresponding author: Tel.: +39 071 220 4897; Fax: +39 071 220 4474

Abstract: We are interested in peer-to-peer (P2P) computing, where a P2P application consists of a (wireless) network of nodes (peers), and assumes full peer autonomy, no global control, and intermittent connectivity. P2P computing has many advantages over classical client-server and web-based distributed architectures. However, the P2P computing model also has a number of limitations in the mechanisms it supports for data management and interchange. To overcome some of these, we propose an agent-based P2P model whose nodes are software agents (peer agents). This paper uses the i* modeling framework to analyze and evaluate peer agent cooperation strategies using three possible evaluation criteria.

Keywords: multi-agent systems, peer-to-peer computing, requirements engineering, information coordination

Journal: Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An international journal, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 3-21, 2003