A FORMAL LANGUAGE THEORETIC APPROACH TO DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING ON DYNAMIC NETWORKS

Abstract

In this paper, we present a formal language theoretic approach to the behavior of complex systems of cooperating and communicating agents performing distributed computation on dynamic networks. In particular, we model peer-to-peer networks and the information harvest of Internet crawlers on the World Wide Web, employing grammar systems theoretical constructions. In grammar systems theory, the grammars can be interpreted as agents, whilst the generated language describes the behavior of the system. To characterize the various phenomena that may arise in peer-to-peer networks, we apply networks of parallel multiset string processors. The multiset string processors form teams, send and receive information through collective and individual filters. We deal with the dynamics of the string collections. To describe the information harvest of the crawlers, we employ certain regulated rewriting devices in eco-grammar systems. We illustrate the wide range of applicability of the regulated rewriting devices in the field of web crawling techniques. We demonstrate that these eco-grammar systems with rather simple component grammars suffice to identify any recursively enumerable language.