Distributed and scalable message transport service for high performance multi-agent systems

Abstract

Multi-agent systems are one of the significant areas in the field of distributed systems. Scalability is one of the issues which effect successful deployment of a particular multi-agent system. Performance and scalability of a system cannot be decoupled because, within a limited number of resources, performance of a multi-agent system varies as the load is increased. Message transport service (MTS) provides the means for agents to communicate across the platform. For high performance, MTS must be dynamically scalable. Existing architectures, which are claimed to be scalable, have some shortcomings. They are centralized, and use component replication or distribution, which has some drawbacks. Priority based queues are one way to achieve dynamic scalability at component level. Peer communication channels provide a mechanism to distribute the load while communication is taking place among different machines. Moreover, peer-to-peer architecture is a hybrid approach to achieving scalability, as it is a blend of the merits of component distribution and replication.