An advanced P2P architecture using autonomous agents

The Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architecture was introduced by Napster as a practice system for resource sharing among users. In P2P architecture clients can serve other clients (peers) while using other peers' recourses. P2P architecture has been widely accepted by data communication designers.; The traditional architecture of Client/Server or Website/Browser has limitations in satisfying the increasing demands for “independent and bi-directional nodes” on the Internet. Many Internet users are looking for more convenient and efficient access to the resources located on other nodes (peers) and also for being aware of other users with the same interests. P2P architecture is a powerful solution for the users to have the ability of sharing resources (e.g. files and devices) and to have better communication among them without using the traditional browsers and servers.; Nevertheless the current P2P systems can support only small subsets of the functions that users expect from a P2P system. In this research, an Advanced P2P Architecture is developed. It provides most of the functions an ideal P2P system should have. The system has the strengths of both virtual P2P and pure P2P: A peer may easily obtain information about other peers as well as the resources/services they provide. Time-consuming jobs can be conducted directly between peers for good performance. The goal is achieved by applying the technology of Autonomous Agents. In the P2P architecture, agents work autonomously on behalf of the users, consult and cooperate with each other, discover resources and find optimum solutions for the users' problems in an Agent to Agent manner.; JINI technology from Sun Microsystems is used, in this research, as an efficient tool to implement the agent-based P2P architecture in which services and peers can be developed as plug-in components of a network.