Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

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.