Chinese Journal of Computers   Full Text
Title	A Dynamic Mobile Multi-Agent-Based Collaboration Model of Peer-to-Peer(P2P) Computing
Authors	XU Xiao-Long1) WANG Ru-Chuan1),2)
Address	1)(College of Computer, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003) 2)( State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093)
Year	2008
Issue	No.7(1261—1267)
Abstract &   Background	Abstract The Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P) technology is able to provide the foundational platform for computing and information sharing among peers of Internet. The cooperation among peers makes it easy to utilize resources resided on each peer to accomplish complex tasks which are too difficult for any single peer to implement. However, the dynamic and unpredictable P2P environment makes it hard for peers to collaborate successfully. This paper proposes a flexible and dynamic collaboration model of P2P system based on the mobile multi-agent technology. The collaboration layer of P2P is constructed with multi-agents, which converts the collaboration relation from peers to agents. And the functional components for a certain task are deployed by mobile agents dynamically. In the last part of this paper, the cryptanalytic application of the collaboration model and the performance test results are given, which prove the practical value of this model. Keywords peer-to-peer computing; collaboration model; mobile multi-agent; cryptanalysis Background This paper is one of the research results of the projects funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program) and other foundations. These projects are directed towards providing a secure mobile multi-agent platform and its typical applications in distributed computing systems, e.g. P2P (Peer-to-peer Computing) systems. Now the research team has realized a prototype system of mobile multi-agent with JAVA and its applications in the P2P, network management, routing systems, etc. In this paper, the authors mainly talked about how to apply the mobile multi-agent technology to P2P systems to improve the collaboration ability of peers. The P2P technology is able to provide the foundational platform for computing and information sharing among peers of Internet. Now researchers usually focus their research on the architecture, resource organization and allocation and routing mechanisms of P2P, while the studies of P2P collaboration mechanism are still not enough. The cooperation among peers makes it easy to utilize resources resided on each peer to accomplish complex tasks which are too difficult for a single peer to implement. However, the dynamic and unpredictable P2P environment makes it hard for peers to collaborate successfully. To solve this problem, they propose a flexible and dynamic collaboration model of P2P system based on the mobile multi-agent technology. The collaboration layer of P2P is constructed with multi-agents, which converts the collaboration relation from peers to agents. And the functional components for a certain task are deployed with mobile agents dynamically. In this paper, the authors describe the definition and features of mobile multi-agent technology firstly. Then a flexible and dynamic collaboration model of P2P system based on mobile multi-agent technology is introduced, including three layers of P2P architecture, collaboration model based on multi-agent and the steps of components deployment based on mobile agents, etc. In the last part of this paper, the cryptanalytic application of the collaboration model and the performance test results are given, which prove the practical value of this model.