A.G.E.N.T.S.: Agents for the General Evolutio of Network Technology and Simulation

SYSTRAN believes that today's conventional network communication, based the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) paradigm, are inefficient in terms of network bandwidth utilization and (for certain classes of operations) rely too heavily on the hardware 'client' and/or the human user. LAN and WAN services using IP are an example of RPC communications, as is used in many DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation) networks. An alternative to RPC communications is afforded by the Remote Programming (RP) paradigm. When using the RP technique for networked communication, bandwidth is substantially conserved, as the on-going 'handshaking' of the conventional RPC paradigm is obviated by having an actual program (this program is called the software agent) transmitted to a server machine and executed there (and not on the original client machine as in RPC). Software agent technology is one of the most promising technoogies being exploited and applied today and, we will (in Phase I) formulate and selectively demonstrate how agents can be used to enhance aircraft simultion. In Phase II, SYSTRAN will prototype a specific software agent application (from the design and lessons-learned in Phase I) and substantially demonstrates its utility in the composition and execution of DIS simulations.