Virtual P2P Environment for Testing and Evaluation of Mobile P2P Agents Networks

The paper proposes virtual peer-to-peer (P2P) emulation environment intended for testing and verification of implemented mobile P2P agent applications set up on top of the FIPA compliant distributed P2P Agent Platform. The Agent Platform implements agent interaction environment and operates on top of the nodes of dynamic P2P network. It fully decouples application agent layer from communication layer thus making it possible to use any P2P communication provider. The proposed virtual P2P communication environment emulates behavior of underlying P2P communication network be means of using the special software emulating P2P providers and communications between them. It enables the operation of genuine P2P agent applications as if the latter operates in real P2P communication environment. Virtual emulation environment possesses user-friendly interface that supports representation of agent-based P2P application and specification of P2P network infrastructure configurations. It is capable to run mobile P2P agent applications within single computer. The developed emulation environment is demonstrated using a case study from telecommunication area and mobile services.