Journal Article•
A Performance Analysis of Multi-Agent Systems
01 Jan 2006-International Transactions on Systems Science and Applications-Vol. 1, Iss: 4, pp 335-342
TL;DR: A performance analysis and a comparison of the Grasshopper and Jade agent platforms is presented, which focuses on the measurement of average round trip times needed for a circular exchange of messages, the data transferred during a certain period of time, and message overhead.
Abstract: In this paper, a performance analysis and a comparison of the Grasshopper and Jade agent platforms is presented. The analysis focuses on the measurement of average round trip times (RTT) needed for a circular exchange of messages, the data transferred during a certain period of time, and message overhead. Tests were performed with different message sizes and coding techniques and the obtained results are presented. A case study was conducted which includes a comparison of two versions of a multi-agent system, called Multi-Agent Remote Maintenance Shell (MARMS), based on two different agent platforms. Presented is a performance analysis of the execution- of management operations on the two versions tested. The analysis focuses on two parameters: the time needed for operation completion and the traffic generated during execution.
Citations
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TL;DR: A resource-efficient agent platform was developed, which relies on established concepts of agent platforms, but modifies and supplements them accordingly, and is implemented in Java and in several C++ variants.
Abstract: Recently, distributed agents are increasingly adopted in automation control systems, where they are used for monitoring, data collection, fault diagnosis and control. However, existing agent platforms do not always fulfill the requirements of practical automation applications in respect of real-time properties and resource usage. Often, they offer a lot of functionality that is not necessary in automation and leads to significant overhead in respect of design effort and runtime resources. To meet the specific requirements of the automation domain, a resource-efficient agent platform was developed, which relies on established concepts of agent platforms, but modifies and supplements them accordingly. This platform is implemented in Java and in several C++ variants. This paper describes the architecture of the platform and discusses several performance issues. Results of various performance tests are presented in comparison to the established agent platform JADE. Finally, a practical use case is presented, where the platform is utilized to drive a hardware-in-the-loop emulation and testing environment.
62 citations
Cites background or methods from "A Performance Analysis of Multi-Age..."
...Therefore, most of today’s use cases for multiagent systems in industry are limited to high-performance PCs and servers, making the performance, memory usage, and real-time issues negligible....
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...The intention was not to develop yet another completely different agent platform, but use the principles of established solutions (primarily JADE and FIPA) and optimize the operations that influence system performance....
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TL;DR: An architecture of such a platform, named Radigost, that is standards-compliant and fully interoperable, in the sense that its agents can transparently interact with agents in existing, third-party multi-agent solutions is presented.
35 citations
29 Nov 2011
TL;DR: The cloud incident detection system Security Audit as a Service (SAaaS) is build upon intelligent autonomous agents, which are aware of underlying business flows of deployed cloud instances, which enable the SAaaS architecture to be flexible and to supported cross customer event monitoring of a cloud infrastructure.
Abstract: Classic intrusion detection mechanisms are not flexible enough to cope with cloud specific characteristics such as frequent infrastructure changes. This makes them unable to address new cloud specific security issues. In this paper we introduce the cloud incident detection system Security Audit as a Service (SAaaS). It is build upon intelligent autonomous agents, which are aware of underlying business flows of deployed cloud instances. Business flows are modelled in form of Security Service Level Agreements, which enable the SAaaS architecture to be flexible and to supported cross customer event monitoring of a cloud infrastructure. As contribution of this paper we provide a high-level design of the SAaaS architecture, an introduction into the concept of Security Service Level Agreements, a first prototype of an autonomous agent and an evaluation about, which cloud specific security problems are addressed by the presented architecture.
27 citations
Cites background from "A Performance Analysis of Multi-Age..."
...[20] show that even with increasing message size the round trip time does not increase significantly....
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13 Dec 2008
TL;DR: This paper investigates and improves the performance of an agent platform with a MABS workload in distributed environments and proposes solutions to overcome performance bottlenecks and facilitate the efficient execution of MABS in a distributed environment.
Abstract: Agent platforms provide a framework for development and execution of parallel applications such as multi-agent based simulation (MABS). However, these platforms have limitations to support large-scale MABS applications in practice. This paper aims at investigating and improving the performance of an agent platform with a MABS workload in distributed environments. We carried out an experimental study with the JADE framework as our agent platform. The experiments show the performance characteristics of the workload and that JADE does not scale well due to message transport and agent directory service limitations. We propose solutions to overcome these performance bottlenecks and facilitate the efficient execution of MABS in a distributed environment. Initial experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approaches.
25 citations
Cites background from "A Performance Analysis of Multi-Age..."
...Experiments show that migration on JADE is an expensive operation, particularly if the number of agents to be migrated is high [14]....
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23 Sep 2014
TL;DR: This paper presents recent research effort aimed at improving the existing Java EE-based agent framework in order to fully exploit the benefits of clustered computing.
Abstract: Modern enterprise-scale applications are executed on computer clusters in order to achieve horizontal scaling, as well as uninterrupted delivery of services. However, the industry-based standards and technical solutions have rarely been utilized by agent developers. This paper presents recent research effort aimed at improving our existing Java EE-based agent framework in order to fully exploit the benefits of clustered computing. Among other benefits, the new architecture provides automatic agent load-balancing and fault-tolerance, without "reinventing the wheel."
16 citations
Cites background from "A Performance Analysis of Multi-Age..."
...This relatively simple, but effective performance study is inspired by those described in [17,23,28]....
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References
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01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: The topics in LNAI include automated reasoning, automated programming, algorithms, knowledge representation, agent-based systems, intelligent systems, expert systems, machine learning, natural-language processing, machine vision, robotics, search systems, knowledge discovery, data mining, and related programming languages.
Abstract: LNAI was established in the mid-1980s as a topical subseries of LNCS focusing on artificial intelligence. This subseries is devoted to the publication of state-of-the-art research results in artificial intelligence, at a high level and in both printed and electronic versions making use of the well-established LNCS publication machinery. As with the LNCS mother series, proceedings and postproceedings are at the core of LNAI; however, all other sublines are available for LNAI as well. The topics in LNAI include automated reasoning, automated programming, algorithms, knowledge representation, agent-based systems, intelligent systems, expert systems, machine learning, natural-language processing, machine vision, robotics, search systems, knowledge discovery, data mining, and related programming languages.
3,464 citations
TL;DR: This article will argue that analyzing, designing, and implementing complex software systems as a collection of interacting, autonomous agents (that is, as a multiagent system) affords software engineers a number of significant advantages over contemporary methods.
Abstract: uilding high-quality, industrialstrength software is difficult. Indeed, it has been argued that developing such software in domains like telecommunications, industrial control, and business process management represents one of the most complex construction tasks humans undertake. Against this background, a wide range of software engineering paradigms have been devised. Each successive development either claims to make the engineering process easier or promises to extend the complexity of applications that can feasibly be built. Although evidence is emerging to support these claims, researchers continue to strive for more effective techniques. To this end, this article will argue that analyzing, designing, and implementing complex software systems as a collection of interacting, autonomous agents (that is, as a multiagent system [4]) affords software engineers a number of significant advantages over contemporary methods. This is not to say that agent-oriented software engineering represents a silver bullet [2]—there is no evidence to suggest it will represent an order of magnitude improvement in productivity. However, the increasing number of deployed applications [4, 8] bears testament to the potential advantages that accrue from such an approach. In seeking to demonstrate the efficacy of agent-oriented techniques, the most compelling argument would be to quantitatively show how their adoption improved the development process in a range of projects. However, such data is simply not available (as it is not for approaches like patterns, application frameworks, and componentware). Given this situation, the best that can be achieved is a qualitative justification of why agent-oriented approaches are well suited to engineering complex, distributed software systems.
1,295 citations
"A Performance Analysis of Multi-Age..." refers background in this paper
...Agent technology is becoming increasingly important with every passing day since it promises to change software construction, as stated in [3], [4]....
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05 Jul 2004
TL;DR: This paper investigates if one of the possible limits may be the scalability of existing agent technology and picked JADE agent platform as technology of choice and investigated its efficiency in a number of test cases.
Abstract: Agent oriented programming is often described as the next breakthrough in development and implementation of large-scale complex software system. At the same time it is rather difficult to find successful applications of agent technology, in particular precisely when large-scale systems are considered. The aim of this paper is to investigate if one of the possible limits may be the scalability of existing agent technology. We have picked JADE agent platform as technology of choice and investigated its efficiency in a number of test cases. Results of our experiments are presented and discussed.
83 citations
"A Performance Analysis of Multi-Age..." refers background in this paper
...The following agents and services must be present at the main container at all times: the AMS (Agent Management System), the DF (Directory Facilitator) and the MTS (Message Transport System) which is also referred to as the ACC (Agent Communication Channel)....
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11 Jun 2003
TL;DR: Remote maintenance shell is described as the protected environment allowing software installation, modification and verification on the remote target system, without suspending its regular operation.
Abstract: The paper deals with a mobile agent based software operation and maintenance. Remote maintenance shell is described as the protected environment allowing software installation, modification and verification on the remote target system, without suspending its regular operation. It is based on the remote operations performed by mobile agents. Multiagent system with collaborative mobile agents, supporting software maintenance, and its architecture are elaborated. Remote maintenance shell implementation in one maintenance session is included.
19 citations
"A Performance Analysis of Multi-Age..." refers background or methods in this paper
...When a change occurs at a remote location (agent creation, destruction, migration, etc.), when sending messages (finding receivers agent location) or when periodical updates are sent to that central point, excess traffic is generated....
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...The MA-RMS [6], [5], [7] is an agent based framework which supports the maintenance and control of software....
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