Agent Communications toward Agentic AI at Edge -- A Case Study of the Agent2Agent Protocol

Abstract: The current evolution of artificial intelligence introduces a paradigm shift toward agentic AI built upon multi-agent systems (MAS). Agent communications serve as a key to effective agent interactions in MAS and thus have a significant impact on the performance of agentic AI applications. The recent research on agent communications has made exciting rapid progress that leads to a variety of protocol designs, among which the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol is considered the most representative one. Simultaneously, the rise of edge intelligence is expected to enable agentic AI at the network edge. However, the current agent communication protocols are designed without sufficient consideration of the special challenges of edge computing, and their effectiveness in the edge environment is largely unexamined. In this paper, we attempt to assess the abilities of agent communication technologies to face the challenges of edge computing using the A2A protocol as a representative case. We first discuss the core functionalities of agent communications, present a landscape of agent communication protocols, and identify the main challenges introduced by edge computing. Then, we conduct a case study on the A2A protocol to examine the key technologies leveraged in the protocol for their effectiveness in meeting the requirements of agent communications in edge computing. Based on the insights obtained from this assessment, we identify open issues in the current agent communication technologies and discuss directions for future research to address these issues.