Messor: Load-Balancing through a Swarm of Autonomous Agents

Abstract. Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are characterized by decentral-ized control, large-scale and extreme dynamism of their environment. Developing applications that can cope with these characteristics requires a paradigm shift that puts adaptation, resilience and self-organization as primary concerns. Complex adaptive systems (CAS), commonly used to explain the behavior of many biological and social systems, could be an appropriate response to these requirements. In order to pursue these ideas, this paper presents Messor, a decentralized load-balancing algo-rithm based on ideas such as multi-agent systems drawn from CAS. A novel P2P grid computing application has been designed using the Mes-sor algorithm, allowing arbitrary users to initiate computational tasks.