Concepts and experiments in computational reflection
OOPSLA '87 Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications
Optimal load balancing and scheduling in a distributed computer system
Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Ant-like agents for load balancing in telecommunications networks
AGENTS '97 Proceedings of the first international conference on Autonomous agents
Multiagent systems and societies of agents
Multiagent systems
The ant colony optimization meta-heuristic
New ideas in optimization
SODA: societies and infrastructures in the analysis and design of agent-based systems
First international workshop, AOSE 2000 on Agent-oriented software engineering
Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and the Unified Process
Multi-Agent Systems: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence
Multi-Agent Systems: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence
ESAW '00 Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Engineering Societies in the Agent World: Revised Papers
Self-Organizing Agents for Grid Load Balancing
GRID '04 Proceedings of the 5th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Grid Computing
A Formal Model for Situated Multi-Agent Systems
Fundamenta Informaticae - Multiagent Systems (FAMAS'03)
Grid load balancing using intelligent agents
Future Generation Computer Systems
Messor: load-balancing through a swarm of autonomous agents
AP2PC'02 Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Agents and peer-to-peer computing
Environments for multiagent systems state-of-the-art and research challenges
E4MAS'04 Proceedings of the First international conference on Environments for Multi-Agent Systems
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A multiagent application consists of an environment and a number of agents. The environment contains information that the agents use and manipulate to do their work. When a multiagent system is decentralized over a number of different hosts (i.e. more than one execution platform is used), the environment has to be decentralized as well. The distributed layout of the environment can influence the performance of agents and of the system. In this paper we discuss when a distributed system can dynamically change its distribution layout. Our focus is on a distributed environment in which mobile agents move around and are aware of the distributed nature of the system. Changes to the layout of the distribution are not only triggered by the agents (like other, application-specific actions), but they can also be triggered by external events and the environment itself. A layer of meta-agents monitors those triggers. It has the ability to pro-actively change the distribution layout over the different hosts when this improves the behavior and efficiency of the application. Using a specific application (solving distributed constraint satisfaction problems) as an example, we indicate the usefulness of changes to the distribution layout and how they can be incorporated easily into a multiagent application design. It turns out that for some problems, the improvement in efficiency can be more than 30%.