Unibo Logo

The Anthill Project

Department of Computer Science
University of Bologna
Bologna, Italy
Department of Telematics
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway
Home
Publications
Documentation
Download
Development
Members
Useful links
Department

Anthill is supported by:
Sun Logo

Publications Page

The main ideas about Anthill have been published in a few conferences and workshops. The original paper presenting Anthill is Anthill: a Framework for the Design and the Analysis of Peer-to-Peer Systems, presented at the 4th European Research Seminar on Advances in Distributed Systems (ERSADS '01), Bertinoro, Italy (May 2001). This workshop paper has been later expanded in a conference paper (Anthill: A Framework for the Development of Agent-Based Peer-to-Peer Systems), presented at the 22th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS '02), Vienna, Austria (July 2002). An extended version of this paper has also been published as a Technical Report of the University of Bologna (UBLCS-2001-09, revised August 2002).

So far, two different applications have been implemented over Anthill:
  • Gnutant is a file-sharing application. In order to facilitate file searches, Gnutant builds a distributed file index scattered across the nest network, whose task is to store URLs for shared files, together with routing information needed to navigate through the index. The index is constructed at runtime by Gnutant ants, that travel through the network collecting information about new and existing files and insert this information in the index. A short description of Gnutant is provided in UBLCS-2001-09. A technical report containing a complete description of Gnutant is in preparation.
  • Messor is a grid computing system aimed at supporting the concurrent execution of highly-parallel, time-intensive computations, in which the workload may be decomposed into a large number of independent jobs. The computational power offered by a network of Anthill nests is exploited by Messor by assigning a set of jobs comprising a computation to a dispersed set of nests. The Messor algorithm has been described in Messor: Load-Balancing through a Swarm of Autonomous Agents, presented at the 1st International Workshop on Agents and Peer-to-Peer Computing, Bologna, Italy, July 2002
The philosophy behind Anthill and its relation to the complex adaptive system area are explained in two workshop papers. The first paper (Towards Self-Organizing, Self-Repairing and Resilient Peer-to-Peer Systems, in Proc. of the International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Computing, Networking 2002, Pisa, Italy, Maggio 2002) contains the first description of Messor. The second paper (Toward Self-Organizing, Self-Repairing and Resilient Large-Scale Distributed Systems, in Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Future Directions in Distributed Computing, Bertinoro, Forlì, Italy, June 2002) discusses how complex adaptive systems may be one of the future trends of distributed computing.

JXTAnthill is discussed in Francesco Russo's master thesis. Francesco is (now a graduated) student who developed the JXTA runtime environment.


Messor: Load-Balancing through a Swarm of Autonomous Agents
Alberto Montresor, Heing Meling and Ozalp Babaoglu
[pdf] [ps.gz]
In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Agents and Peer-to-Peer Computing, Bologna, Italy, July 2002. Also appears as Technical Report UBLCS-2002-11, University of Bologna, Italy.
Abstract: Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are characterized by decentralized control, large-scale and extreme dynamism of their environment. Developing applications that can cope with these characteristics requires a paradigm shift that puts adaptation, resilience and self-organization as primary concerns. Complex adaptive systems (CAS), commonly used to explain the behavior of many biological and social systems, could be an appropriate response to these requirements. In order to pursue these ideas, this paper
presents Messor, a decentralized load-balancing algorithm based on techniques such as multi-agent systems drawn from CAS.  A novel P2P grid computing system has been designed using the Messor algorithm, allowing arbitrary users to initiate computational tasks.

Towards Self-Organizing, Self-Repairing and Resilient Large-Scale Distributed Systems
Alberto Montresor, Heing Meling, Ozalp Babaoglu
[pdf] [ps.gz]
In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Future Directions in Distributed Computing, Bertinoro, Forlì (Italy), June 2002. Also appears as Technical Report UBLCS-2002-10, University of Bologna, Italy.
Abstract: The paper itself is an extended abstract.

Towards Self-Organizing, Self-Repairing and Resilient Peer-to-Peer Systems
Alberto Montresor, Heing Meling, Ozalp Babaoglu
[pdf] [ps.gz]
In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Computing, Networking 2002, Pisa, Italy, May 2002. Also appears as Technical Report UBLCS-2002-09, University of Bologna, Italy.
Abstract: Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are characterized by decentralized control, large scale and extreme dynamism of their operating environment. Developing applications that can cope with these characteristics requires a paradigm shift, placing adaptation, resilience and self-organization as primary concerns. In this note, we argue that complex adaptive systems (CAS), which have been used to explain certain biological, social and economical phenomena, can be the basis of a programming paradigm for P2P applications. In order to pursue this idea, we are developing Anthill, a framework to support the design, implementation and evaluation of P2P applications based on ideas such as multi-agent and evolutionary programming borrowed from CAS.

Anthill: A Framework for the Development of Agent-Based Peer-to-Peer Systems
Ozalp Babaoglu, Hein Meling and Alberto Montresor
[pdf] [ps.gz]
In Proceedings of the 22th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS '02), Vienna, Austria, July 2002. Also appears as Technical Report UBLCS-2001-09, University of Bologna, Italy.
Abstract: Recent peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are characterized by decentralized control, large scale and extreme dynamism of their operating environment. As such, they can be seen as instances of complex adaptive systems (CAS) typically found in biological and social sciences.  In this paper we describe Anthill, a framework to support the design, implementation and evaluation of P2P applications based on ideas such as multi-agent and evolutionary programming borrowed from CAS. An Anthill system consists of a dynamic network of peer nodes; societies of adaptive agents travel through this network, interacting with nodes and cooperating with other agents in order to solve complex problems. Anthill can be used to construct different classes of P2P services that exhibit resilience, adaptation and self-organization properties. We also describe preliminary experiences with Anthill in implementing a file sharing application.

Anthill: a Framework for the Design and Analysis of Peer-to-Peer Systems
Alberto Montresor
[pdf] [ps.gz]
In Proceedings of the 4th European Research Seminar on Advances in Distributed Systems, Bertinoro, Italy, May 2001.
Abstract: The peer-to-peer (P2P) paradigm for building distributed applications has recently attracted the attention of industry and media primarily due to the enormous success of systems such as Napster, Gnutella and Freenet. The multitude of projects that have been proposed based on P2P all need to confront common problems including security, reliability and routing. Unfortunately, traditional techniques for dealing with these issues are not directly applicable to P2P systems in part due to the dimensions of their scale. In this paper, we introduce a new approach for designing P2P applications based on the biological metaphor of ant colonies. Furthermore, we present Anthill, a framework supporting the development and study of new protocols based on the P2P approach.