Service-based computing for agents on disruption and delay prone networks

As computing and communication hardware becomes smaller and more powerful, computer networking is being applied to a wide array of problems and settings. The ubiquity of wireless Internet access in urban society is just one symptom of this advance. However, in many domains the nature of the network is significantly unlike that of traditional wired networking. Common assumptions regarding properties such as delay, connectivity models, and hosts often do not hold, posing many new challenges to be addressed. Two archetypical settings highlighting these are Interplanetary Internet and mobile ad-hoc networks. The network layer alone cannot resolve many of these issues---it is not possible to completely shield the application layer from factors such as long delays and frequent disconnects. Agents in these settings cannot behave as they would on a wired network and achieve similar performance. Developing effective agent-based systems for these environments therefore requires new approaches, techniques, and agent behaviors to account for these constraints.