KNS

KNS Who do you want to be today?

Communication is a central problem in distributed systems. Without the ability to communicate, a set of agents would be a merely a collection of isolated systems. All classic distributed systems problems, such as coordination and distributed reasoning, depend on an underlying communication framework. Before communication can take place, there must be a known destination. KNS, like the KQML ANS scheme, adds a communication layer in which symbolic names are mapped to actual internet addresses. In addition, however, it offers more advanced support for dynamic group formation and disbanding, and a more abstract notion of agent identity, independent of any particular name or globally unique identifier.

KNS has been in the design stage for roughly one year, and a formal specification draft is in preparation. Expect to see it posted shortly.

Principal Architects: R. Scott Cost Ian Soboroff	KNS Summary (a very preliminary introduction). 7/15/98 Brief presentation. KNS as presented in a compilation of agent technology for Lucite, 10/21/98 Response to FIPA's 5th Call for Proposals: Agent Naming, 1/24/99

Last updated: 1/25/99