Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2006
This paper introduces Rudder, a peer-to-peer agent framework for supporting autonomic applications in decentralized distributed environments. The framework provides agents to discover, select, and compose elements, and defines agent interaction and negotiation protocols to enable appropriate application behaviors to be negotiated and enacted dynamically. The implementations of these protocols as well as agent coordination and negotiation activities are supported by Comet, a scalable decentralized coordination substrate. The operation and experimental evaluation of Rudder is presented.