The performance of multiple traders operating in the same domain

The authors consider the case of trading in an environment of autonomous components. Trading is the process of matching a service request with the offers to support that particular service made by potential servers. In the case of multiple matching offers a selection of the most suitable server can be made according to the properties of the server. Among the possible selection policies the authors concentrate on those taking into account the actual load of the server. The selection process is usually delegated to a specialised type of component, called the trader. Various aspects influence the performance of the traders, including the delay of the information on the server load, the selection strategy, and the number of concurrent traders. The authors investigate several trading strategies in a scenario where traders receive the load information periodically and where multiple traders operate concurrently