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Location-Independent Communication for Mobile Agents: A Two-Level Architecture

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Internet Programming Languages (ICCL 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1686))

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Abstract

We study communication primitives for interaction between mobile agents. They can be classified into two groups. At a low level there are location dependent primitives that require a programmer to know the current site of a mobile agent in order to communicate with it. At a high level there are location independent primitives that allow communication with a mobile agent irrespective of its current site and of any migrations. Implementation of these requires delicate distributed infrastructure. We propose a simple calculus of agents that allows implementations of such distributed infrastructure algorithms to be expressed as encodings, or compilations, of the whole calculus into the fragment with only location dependent communication. These encodings give executable descriptions of the algorithms, providing a clean implementation strategy for prototype languages. The calculus is equipped with a precise semantics, providing a solid basis for understanding the algorithms and for reasoning about their correctness and robustness. Two sample infrastructure algorithms are presented as encodings.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge

    Peter Sewell & Pawel T. Wojciechowski

  2. Dept. of Computer & Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania

    Benjamin C. Pierce

Authors
  1. Peter Sewell
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  2. Pawel T. Wojciechowski
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  3. Benjamin C. Pierce
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Henri E. Bal

  2. EECS Department, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, 70118, USA

    Boumediene Belkhouche

  3. Microsoft Research, 1 Guildhall St, Cambridge, CB2 3NH, UK

    Luca Cardelli

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Sewell, P., Wojciechowski, P.T., Pierce, B.C. (1999). Location-Independent Communication for Mobile Agents: A Two-Level Architecture. In: Bal, H.E., Belkhouche, B., Cardelli, L. (eds) Internet Programming Languages. ICCL 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1686. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47959-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47959-7_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66673-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47959-8

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