The Michigan Internet Auctionbot: a Conngurable Auction Server for Human and Software Agents

Market mechanisms such as auctions will likely rep resent a common interaction medium for agents on the Internet The Michigan Internet AuctionBot is a ex ible scalable and robust auction server that supports both software and human agents The server manages many simultaneous auctions by separating the interface from the core auction procedures This design provides a responsive interface and tolerates system and network disruptions but necessitates careful timekeeping proce dures to ensure temporal accuracy The AuctionBot has been used extensively in classroom exercises and is available to the general Internet population Its exi ble speci cation of auctions in terms of orthogonal pa rameters makes it a useful device for agent researchers exploring the design space of auction mechanisms