Scalable distributed agent-based English auction server

This paper presents a distributed agent-based server architecture for English auctions. Bids of auction participants are handled by a hierarchical organization of agents that can be efficiently distributed on a computer network. This approach avoids the bottlenecks of bid processing that might occur during periods of heavy bidding, like for example snipping. We present experimental results that show a significant improvement of the server throughput compared with the architecture where one auction manager agent is used for coordinating the participants for each active auction that is registered with the server.