Information Sharing among Autonomous Agents in Referral Networks

Referral networks are a kind of P2P system consisting of autonomous agents who seek and provide services, or refer other service providers. Key applications include service discovery and selection, and knowledge sharing. An agent seeking a service contacts other agents to discover suitable service providers. An agent who is contacted may autonomously ignore the request or respond by providing the desired service or giving a referral. This use of referrals is inspired by human interactions, where referrals are a key basis for judging the trustworthiness of a given service. The use of referrals differentiates such networks from traditional P2P information sharing systems, which are based on request flooding. Not only does the use of referrals enable an agent to control how its request is processed, it also provides an architectural basis for four kinds of interaction policies. InterPol is a language and framework supporting such policies. InterPol provides an ability to specify requests...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: AP2PC
• Authors: Yathiraj B. Udupi, Munindar P. Singh
• Keywords: AP2PC 2007, Autonomous Agents, Intelligent Agents, InterPol, Service Providers