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Multiagent Foundations for Distributed Systems: A Vision

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Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13190))

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Abstract

Early works and retrospectives by the researchers who founded the network protocols underlying current distributed systems indicate they were aware of the importance of capturing application meaning but didn’t know how to handle it programmatically. Therefore, those researchers introduced simplifications in the protocols that violated their own principle of the end-to-end argument in systems design.

The thesis of this vision paper is the following. First, the above-mentioned simplifications, especially the reliance on reliable, ordered communication protocols such as TCP have run their course. Modern applications demand flexibility that can only be achieved through modeling application meaning, and many applications (such as those based on the Internet of Things) cannot pay TCP’s overhead. Second, the multiagent systems community has developed alternative meaning-based approaches that can provide a new foundation for distributed computing at large.

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Acknowledgments

Grants from the NSF (IIS-1908374) and EPSRC (EP/N027965/1) supported this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster, UK

    Amit K. Chopra & Samuel H. Christie V

  2. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA

    Samuel H. Christie V & Munindar P. Singh

Authors
  1. Amit K. Chopra
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  2. Samuel H. Christie V
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  3. Munindar P. Singh
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Correspondence to Amit K. Chopra .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Natasha Alechina

  2. University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Matteo Baldoni

  3. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Brian Logan

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Chopra, A.K., Christie V, S.H., Singh, M.P. (2022). Multiagent Foundations for Distributed Systems: A Vision. In: Alechina, N., Baldoni, M., Logan, B. (eds) Engineering Multi-Agent Systems. EMAS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13190. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97457-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97457-2_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-97456-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-97457-2

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