An agent-based framework for large scale internet applications

The idea of a software entity that performs tasks on behalf of a user across the Internet is now well established. We introduce in this paper a new approach to service discovery and QoS negotiation over the Internet. Our approach presents a framework for service discovery and QoS negotiation at the network level that rely on two concepts: multi- agent systems and agent communication languages (ACL). In this frame- work, a user and service agents engage in a structured communication through the m ediation of a QoS Broker Agent and a Facilitator Agent. Here, the Facilitator Agent acts on behalf of several service agents. It acquires information from these service agents and acts as a single point of contact to supply this information to the User Agent via the QoS Broker Agent. A number of service discovery protocols like the Service Location Protocol (SLP), and Sun Microsystem's Jini has been designed for restricted environments and do not scale to the entire Internet. In order to provide an infrastructure for large scale Internet applications, we designed a prototype multi-agent system that is able to discover re- sources and negotiate QoS at the network level.