TR00-03 Abstract

We believe that the challenges faced by future network applications, such as scalability, adaptability, and survivability/availability have already been overcome by large scale biological systems and that future network applications will benefit by adopting key biological principles and mechanisms.   The Bio-Networking Architecture is a paradigm as well as middleware that enables the construction and deployment of scalable, adaptive, and survivable/available applications.   In the Bio-Networking Architecture, applications are constructed using a collection of autonomous mobile agents, called cyber-entities.   A cyber-entity is analogous to an individual bee in the biological world.   Like their biological counterparts, cyber-entities follow biological principles and contain biological mechanisms.   The desirable characteristics of an application emerge from the collective actions and interactions of its constituent cyber-entities.   We describe a web content distribution application called Aphid, which was constructed using the Bio-Networking Architecture.   Through simulations, we show that Aphid adapts to changing user demand and location.   Aphid's scalability and survivability/availability are also demonstrated through simulations.

Network Research Group
Dept. of Information and Computer Science
University of California, Irvine