Polling and pinging considered harmful

I recently posted some comments entitled "Polling and pinging considered harmful" over on my Base Technology blog. My concerns there were split between overall network architecture and the impact on what the user sees and experiences. Here in the world of software agents, I still have the overall network architecture concerns, but the user is replaced with software agents and the developers and users of those agents.

If and when software agent technology is ready for prime-time, software agents will place enormous demands on our network infrastructure, far beyond the demands of sluggish human users. The idea that software agents should be polling and pinging to access information is completely ridiculous, except for low-volume or localized applications.

For widespread adoption of true software agent applications we simply must have a true information distribution architecture that attempts to optimize information flow rather than forcing a maximization of dysfunctional information flow.

-- Jack Krupansky