British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

British Telecommunications Corporation

Habin Lee

Patrik Mihailescu

John W Shepherdson

John William Shepherdson

John Willliam Shepherdson

An assignment system for allocating service providers to required services, comprising: a data processing unit; a data store storing a plurality of allocation processing routines each defining a respective algorithm for determining in respect of a service which of a series of potential providers of that service is/are preferred to provide the service; and an allocation mode selector configured to access a data store storing a list of required services and attributes of each required service, to select in dependence on the attributes of one of those services one of the allocation processing routines and to cause that allocation processing routine to be executed in respect of that one of the services by means of the data processing unit so determine which of a series of potential providers of the service is/are preferred to provide that service.

Task dispatching system

An anomaly management method is provided for a multi-agent system (MAS) in which a plurality of application agents are arranged to be capable of interacting with each other over a communications network. The MAS has a plurality of anomaly management agents arranged to receive reports from a referring agent regarding a referred agent when a referring agent has determined an interaction anomaly has occurred which was potentially caused by one or more conditions associated with a referred agent. The anomaly management agent is arranged to determine one or more conditions associated with the referred agent which have caused the interaction anomaly. The anomaly management agent is also arranged to remedy the condition. The method comprises at least one of said plurality of anomaly management agents receiving a message containing information related to the interaction with the referred agent from the referring agent. The message comprises information identifying the referred agent and other information related to the interaction anomaly. One or more possible conditions associated with the referred agent which may have caused the interaction anomaly are determined from the information provided by the referring agent. A plurality of tests is then performed to determine at least one condition associated with the referred agent. Finally, the condition associated with the referred agent is remedied. The referring agent may then be provided with feedback information to enable the interaction to be resumed.

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Ipswich, United Kingdom

Habin Lee