P2P vs. Broker: The Architecture Decision Defining Multi-Agent Systems

Short summary

Multi-agent systems traditionally rely on centralized brokers, but this becomes a bottleneck at scale. Peer-to-peer architectures offer linear throughput and fault tolerance with network-layer discovery, though they require stronger observability tooling. Production systems often combine both: brokers for auditable internal coordination, P2P for external queries and ephemeral agents.

• •Broker architectures scale poorly due to throughput ceilings and latency from multi-hop routing; P2P eliminates coordinator bottlenecks
• •Pilot Protocol uses session-layer addressing (48-bit per-agent IDs) and domain-specific groups to enable direct agent discovery without broker registration
• •Optimal production pattern: use brokers for stateful orchestration and access control, P2P for parallel high-throughput operations and ephemeral agents

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