Collective intelligence and priority routing in networks

This paper describes how biologically-inspired agents can be used to solve complex routing problems incorporating prioritized information flow. These agents, inspired by the foraging behavior of ants, exhibit the desirable characteristics of simplicity of action and interaction. The collection of agents, or swarm system, deals only with local knowledge and exhibits a form of distributed control with agent communication effected through the environment. While ant-like agents have been applied to the routing problem, previous work has ignored the problems of agent adaptation, multi-path and priority-based routing. These are discussed here