Abstract
This chapter describes an alternative way of controlling dynamic routing in a communications network. The technique used is based on simple mobile software agents modeled on ants which continually modify the routing tables in response to congestion in the network, and which co-ordinate their actions using stigmergy, a form of indirect communication used by social insects. The principle is demonstrated on a simulated communications network modeling typical distributions of calls between nodes. The network also supports a population of mobile software agents — the ants —designed to imitate the behavior of certain ants, which lay and follow trails of scent, or pheromone. As the ants move across the network between randomly chosen pairs of nodes, they deposit simulated pheromone at each node as a function of the distance traveled and the congestion encountered on the journey. They select their path at each intermediate node as a function of the distribution of simulated pheromone at that node. Calls are also routed according to the pheromone distributions at each intermediate node. The ant-based control is compared with other routing methods on the ability to deal with changing call distributions and high network loads. Despite their simplicity the ant-like agents are shown to adapt smoothly to the ever-changing and complex behavior of the network, preventing or removing congestion by distributing the load on the network evenly and keeping the average load low. The system is shown to exhibit many attractive features deriving from the same factors that make natural ants successful. The prospects for extending this type of distributed control to the Internet are also considered.
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Schoonderwoerd, R., Holland, O. (1999). Minimal Agents for Communications Network Routing: The Social Insect Paradigm. In: Hayzelden, A.L.G., Bigham, J. (eds) Software Agents for Future Communication Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58418-3_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58418-3_13
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