Shaun McQuaker
This presentation 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 neighbour with other agents that supply the required service or will refer the right source. This paper is based on the research presented in Munindar P. Singh's paper entitled "Emergent Properties of Referral Systems" [Singh and Yolum, 2003a]. A simulation program for a referral network is discussed and the additional topic of propagating relational concept knowledge in the network to enhance search queries is investigated. Agents with relational concept knowledge can supply suggestions to a querying agent on how to adapt their interests, and thus allowing agents to search in a new manner so as to return better results.