Multiagent and Grid Systems - Volume 1, issue 3

Authors: Hui, Janice W.Y. | Lam, Toby H.W. | Lee, Raymond S.T.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Recently, agents have received substantial attention in AI research community. Agents have the autonomous properties, automatic delegation of jobs, highly mobile and adaptive behavior in the environment. It is one of the potential areas of development for the E-commence. By using agents' technology, it is possible to model negotiation. Agents could act as the representatives of the buyers to perform shopping activities. In this paper, a new approach for negotiation was proposed. Fuzzy logic is used as the basic reasoning tool for negotiation. With the Fuzzy logic technology, the negotiation context was represented in linguistic variables. A prototype of an …e-shopping system was developed for evaluation. By using the proposed algorithm, the price was 6% cheaper than the original price. In addition, the product could had a better quality (5% higher than original) and longer period of warranty (5% longer than the original). Show more

Keywords: Intelligent agents, utility function, negotiation strategy, multi-agent systems

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1301

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 131-146, 2005

Authors: Wangham, Michelle S. | Fraga, Joni S. | Rabelo, Ricardo J. | Lung, Lau C.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The paradigm of mobile agents may be used in large-scale distributed systems due to its flexibility that comes from the mobility notion. However, this promising technology brings some security concerns of its own. This paper focuses on mechanisms of the Mobile Agent Security Scheme – MASS – for protecting mobile agents against malicious platforms by considering large-scale systems. This proposed scheme, based on secure data repositories, comprises prevention and detection cryptographic protocols of agent security violation. The scheme is based on the SPKI/SDSI infrastructure and on the concept of SPKI Federation for providing scalability and flexibility to the distributed applications …on the Internet. In addition, it proposes an approach on how trust building in mobile agent-based architectures can be reinforced by the use of security mechanisms in the search and select of partners for creating a Virtual Enterprise. A prototype of the MASS was implemented and integrated in order to demonstrate its suitability for a distributed application with mobile agents (MobiCII system). Show more

Keywords: Mobile agent security, secure data repositories, prevention and detection mechanisms

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1302

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 147-168, 2005

Authors: Lai, Kevin | Rasmusson, Lars | Adar, Eytan | Zhang, Li | Huberman, Bernardo A.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Distributed clusters like the Grid and PlanetLab enable the same statistical multiplexing efficiency gains for computing as the Internet provides for networking. One major challenge is allocating resources in an economically efficient and low-latency way. A common solution is proportional share, where users each get resources in proportion to their pre-defined weight. However, this does not allow users to differentiate the value of their jobs. This leads to economic inefficiency. In contrast, systems that require reservations impose a high latency (typically minutes to hours) to acquire resources. This paper describes Tycoon, a market based distributed resource allocation system …based on proportional share. The key advantages of Tycoon are that it allows users to differentiate the values of their jobs, its resource acquisition latency is limited only by communication delays, and it imposes no manual bidding overhead on users. Experimental results using a prototype implementation of the design are included. Show more

Keywords: Price-anticipating mechanism, resource allocation, nash equilibrium, fairness, price of anarchy

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1303

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 169-182, 2005

Authors: Li, Zhen | Parashar, Manish

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: This paper describes Rudder, a decentralized agent-based infrastructure for supporting the autonomic composition of Grid applications. Rudder provides agents and protocols for discovering, selecting, and composing elements. It also implements agent interaction and negotiation protocols to enable appropriate application behaviors to be dynamically negotiated and enacted. The defined protocols and agent activities are supported by Comet, a scalable decentralized shared-space based coordination substrate. The implementation, operation and experimental evaluation of the system are presented.

Keywords: Autonomic composition, self-managing Grid applications, agent-based system, decentralized coordination substrate

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1304

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 183-195, 2005

Authors: Lőrincz, László Csaba | Kozsik, Tamás | Ulbert, Attila | Horváth, Zoltán

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The execution of data intensive Grid applications still raises several questions regarding job scheduling, data migration and replication. The optimisation techniques applied by these services significantly determine how fast a job can be executed and how quickly the user can get the execution results. In this paper new strategies are presented for scheduling the execution of data intensive, parameter-sweep applications. By taking into account the way applications access their data, the extended Grid middleware can achieve lower response times and earlier execution results. Therefore, the proposed improved Grid middleware (1) monitors the execution of jobs and gathers resource …access information, (2) analyses the compiled information and generates a description of the behaviour of the job, and (3) uses this newly generated behaviour description to run scheduling algorithm(s). The proposed job behaviour description allows new schedulers to estimate the job completion time more precisely, therefore it leads to better scheduling decisions. Besides, the proposed monitoring technique and analyser tool enable the user to generate the required job behaviour description automatically. Show more

Keywords: Clusters, data grids, job scheduling, execution time prediction, parameter-sweep applications

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1305

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 197-208, 2005

Authors: Gatani, Luca | Re, Giuseppe Lo

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: One of the main technical challenges in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks is how to efficiently locate desired resources. Although structured systems, based on distributed hash tables, can achieve fair effectiveness, they are not suitable for widely deployed Internet applications. In fact, this kind of systems shows many severe limitations, such as ignoring the autonomous nature of peers, and supporting only weakly semantic functions. Unstructured P2P networks are more attractive for real applications, since they can avoid both the limitations of centralized systems, and the drawbacks of structured approaches. However, their search algorithms are usually based on inefficient flooding schemes, that make …large systems quickly overwhelmed by the query-induced load. In order to address this major limitation, this paper proposes a local adaptive routing protocol for searching in unstructured systems. The approach exploits a smart neighbor selection process that significantly improves resource discovery. Furthermore, this mechanism facilitates the dynamic evolution of a P2P system based on an unstructured topology, grouping together nodes with similar interests, thus allowing the emerging of small world topologies. Extensive simulations show that the algorithm proposed scales well and has a very good impact on the successful rate, allowing to retrieve the resources searched even when they are sparse. Show more

Keywords: P2P networks, adaptive routing, small world paradigm

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1306

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 209-224, 2005

Authors: Unland, Rainer | Tianfield, Huaglory

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The recent significant progresses in (wired and wireless) network and middleware technologies have opened a huge opportunity for many new research areas and paradigms related to open distributed computing systems. This paper aims to define a synthesis among these areas that are in one way or another related either to multi-agent systems or Grid computing or both, such as Semantic Grid, Agent-based Grid Computing, Service-oriented Architectures, (and utility-based computing). It is argued that there is a substantial overlap between the key issues being addressed by these areas. Thus, it makes sense to stimulate interdisciplinary research at a higher level of …synthesis. This will open an exciting opportunity for ambient and open distributed computing environments that combines the qualities of the above mentioned individual research areas. Show more

Keywords: Agent-based grid computing, multi-agent system, pervasive computing, semantic grid, service-oriented architecture, utility-based computing

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1307

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 225-229, 2005

Article Type: Correction

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1308

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 231-231, 2005

Authors: Ridge, Enda | Kudenko, Daniel | Kazakov, Dimitar | Curry, Edward

Article Type: Other

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1309

Citation: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 233-234, 2005