Towards a minimal hosting specification for open agent systems:the lessons of IP

Abstract

In this paper we observe that the strategies adopted by many standards projects may unnecessarily restrict the range of agent control, addressing and communication strategies which can be hosted, and hence limit the adoption of conformant hosting platforms. We argue that a minimal hosting platform is required to achieve convergence to common standards. Using the example of Internet Protocol - a minimal communication standard addressing issues common to all supervening protocols - we hope to stimulate discussion of a minimal hosting specification, which could address issues common to the hosting of all supervening agent strategies. We draw the reader's attention to issues of resource contention and other conflicts of interest which are expected to arise in open, heterogeneous, agent systems. An analogy is drawn between the resource contention strategies adopted to manage IP route conflicts and the those required to manage hosting resource conflicts