Channeled Multicast for Group

Multi-agent systems an bene t from the possibility of broadasting messages to a wide audien e. The audien e may in lude overhearing agents whi h, unknown to senders, observe onversations and, among other things, pro-a tively send suggestions. Current mainstream agent ommuni ation languages however la k adequate support for broad asting. This paper de nes the requirements for a form of broadast that we all hanneled multi ast, whose distinguishing features in lude the ability to distinguish streams of messages by their theme, and to address agents by their hara teristi s. We present an implementation based on multi ast IP, alled LoudVoi e. We show how hanneled multi ast ould be used in alternative to mat hmaking, and present in some detail a broad ast-based version of the English Au tion Intera tion Proto ol. Finally, we dis uss how we use the ability to overhear onversations in order to build innovative appli ations and we present a ase study whi h is a testbed for various types of agents and multi-agent systems.