On the importance of relational concept knowledge in referral networks

Abstract

This paper deals with the topic of peer-to-peer referral systems and the policies that allow for the emergence of efficient retrieval of requested information. In an agent-based peer-to-peer network, member agents are capable of giving and following referrals to each other. This results in the emergence of communities where agents directly interact with other neighboring agents that supply the required service or will refer the right source. The notion of referral networks, as presented in the work of (Yolum and Singh, Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp 592–599, 2003), and their application to knowledge management, lacks two fundamental aspects; the relation of concepts within a domain, and the ability of an agent to dynamically change their interests based on suggestions in the form of concept relations. This paper introduces the concept of an oracle agent, which is an agent with relational concept knowledge that can supply suggestions to a querying agent on how to adapt their interests. Additionally the notion of health and localized trust automata are used to aid agents in discriminating useful pieces of concept knowledge. These new features allow agents to search in new ways so as to achieve superior results and as a consequence outperform agents in a traditional referral network. The paper presents simulation results that confirm this hypothesis.