- Ibis integration in AgentScape
- The current communication layer in AgentScape depends on creation
and deletion of communication endpoints (similar to Unix sockets) and
provides secure end-to-end communication between hosts running
AgentScape middleware. This approach provides a basic communication mechanism, but
it is not very flexible or extensible. The Ibis project,
also developed in the Computer Systems group at the VU, provides a uniform Java-based
communication layer (the Ibis Portability Layer) that is specifically
designed for usage in a grid and other distributed environments.
- Research proposal:
Investigate the feasibility and then (if feasible) replace the
current communication infrastructure of AgentScape with the Ibis'
IPL. Make sure that the communication layer provides authentication,
confidentiality and integrity.
- Dynamic and Robust Tree Overlays
- Hierarchical structures support a wide range of network management
applications. However, trees suffer from the effect of failures, as a
node disconnection results in the disconnection of a branch from the
main body of the tree. Minimizing the effect of failures means
decreasing the number of nodes in the disconnected branch. This can be
achieved by building reliability-driven trees in which more reliable
nodes are placed closer to the root leaving the unreliable ones
underneath. Moreover, in the case of failures, the system must be
able to react and reconnect the disconnected nodes in the tree on the
fly (dynamically).
- Research proposal:
This project focuses on the dynamic building and maintenance of tree
overlays. The candidate must be able to explore the feasibility of
existing mechanisms and potentially propose and implement other
effective ones. The evaluation of the system will be based on
simulations, thus good programming skills are required.
- Web service composition, comparison of description languages
using planning algorithm
- Service Oriented Architectures are becoming more prevalent, with
Web service technology as their main instantiation. Automated
Web service composition, using planning algorithms, is used to
create complex functionality, and to make it accessible on the
fly. The properties used for planning are defined in web service
description languages. Explore planning using three different
web service description languages: WSDL, OWL-S and WSDL-S. WSDL
is commonly used in workflow- and GRID based environments,
describing the interface. OWL-S is a knowledge- based
representation, describing semantic information. WSDL-S acts as
a merger between the two previous approaches.
- Research project:
Explore configuration by planning, using these three
languages. Evaluate and compare their applicability within the
domain of configuration.
- AgentScape Mobile
- Mobile devices are traditionally unable to perform complex tasks or execute complex applications.
Recently, with the advent of such devices as Apple's iPhone, Google's Android technology and
the widespread adoption of Windows mobile, the abilty to execute complex applications is more readily available.
- Research project:
Investigate and develop an implementation of AgentScape for mobile devices. Initially it is proposed to develop a
version of AgentScape for a simulator, but the goal is to have a running version on existing mobile hardware.
- Security for AgentScape
- Securing hosts from malicious agents entails monitoring every action that
the agent attempts on the host. Whenever an agent
makes a call to the middleware API, it is first mediated upon by a
security manager. The security manager checks the system policy to determine
if an action, such as migration and resource access, should be allowed or denied.
For example, a host could decide that it is not willing to allow an agent to
migrate anywhere except directly back to the owner's host, or, perhaps, to another
host that has been properly authenticated to the current host.
- Research project:
The goal of this project is to implement a robust security manager in AgentScape.
This security manager should monitor all the security relevant actions that Agents
perform on a secured host.
- Support Service Level Agreements in AgentScape
- A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is an electronic contract between a
service user and a provider, and specifies the service to be
provided, Quality of Service (QoS) properties that must be
maintained by a provider during service provision (generally defined
as a set of Service Level Objectives (SLOs)), and a set of penalty
clauses specifying what happens when service providers fail to
deliver the QoS agreed. Although significant work exists on how
SLOs may be specified and monitored, not much work has focused on
actually identifying how SLOs may be impacted by the choice of
specific penalty clauses. A trusted mediator may be used to resolve
conflicts between the parties involved.
- Research Proposal:
The objectives of this work is to extend the AgentScape environment with an
extension of WS-Agreement to support monitoring of violations and
to enforce penalty clauses based on this monitoring of SLAs.
- Support multiple and new languages for AgentScape agents
- AgentScape currently supports Java and C agents. Support for
Python agents is underway. In future, other languages can be
supported, such as, lisp, ruby or C#. Determining the consequences
of multiple binary agents and managing multiple programming
languages form the main research questions in this project
- Research project:
Develop support for agents written in a new language and analyze the consequences thereof
- Autonomic AgentScape Deployment on Distributed Networks
- AgentScape should support automatic installation. Suppose that an agent could
migrate to a host that has not yet installed AgentScape? An agent
could first transfer all the necessary components of the
AgentScape environment to the remote host and start the
environment and finally migrate to it. Such a scheme would allow for
easy and rapid deployment of AgentScape in a network.
- Research project:
Develop a rapid and user-friendly deployment program for AgentScape
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