The ACORN multi-agent system

ACORN (Agent-based Community Oriented Routing Network) is a distributed multi-agent architecture for the search, distribution and management of information in networks. ACORN utilizes the concept of ‘information as agent’ together with an application of Stanley Milgram’s Small World Problem (the idea of Six Degrees of Separation) in order to route individual items of information around networks of people and agents. The ACORN ideal is to achieve a state where a web of users is created such that information distribution, queries and search, and browsing behaviour is encapsulated in a single adaptive architecture which learns community behaviour and knowledge in order to route agents to relevant destinations (users). This paper describes the ACORN architecture and its implementation. We introduce a novel idea of agent meeting places, or Cafés, to carry out community-based information sharing among mobile agents in ACORN. ACORN is compared with similar work, and evaluations of ACORN for information sharing among mobile agents are described. Applications of ACORN include Business to Business and Business to Consumer based e-Commerce solutions, virtual community creation and support systems, peer reviewing systems, and personalized directed information handling (search, dissemination and growth).