Agent Gateway Interconnection: Use Cases and Requirements
draft-wang-agent-gateway-interconnect-usecase-req-00

Network Working Group                                            J. Wang
Internet-Draft                                              China Mobile
Intended status: Informational                           2 November 2026
Expires: 6 May 2027

       Agent Gateway Interconnection: Use Cases and Requirements
          draft-wang-agent-gateway-interconnect-usecase-req-00

Abstract

   This document defines use cases and requirements for interconnection
   of Agent Gateways (AGWs) across separate administrative domains.  An
   Agent Gateway acts as a trust and protocol boundary for AI agents,
   mediating agent discovery, intent routing, policy enforcement,
   context translation, and secure cross-domain collaboration.  This
   draft does not specify a wire protocol.  Instead, it collects
   representative deployment scenarios and derives functional,
   operational, and interoperability requirements to guide future
   protocol design for AGW-to-AGW interconnection.

Status of This Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 6 May 2027.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Agent Gateway Interconnection Model . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.1.  Cross-Domain Task Delegation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.2.  Federated Agent Discovery and Capability Lookup . . . . .   5
     4.3.  Multi-Party Collaborative Agent Workflow  . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     5.1.  Functional Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.2.  Interoperability Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.3.  Operational Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Conclusion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   9.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   10. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   AI agents are increasingly deployed as autonomous or semi-autonomous
   entities that perform tasks, consume tools, maintain context, and
   coordinate with other agents.  Agents may belong to different
   organizations, run on heterogeneous stacks, expose different
   interaction protocols, and operate under independent trust and data
   governance rules.

   Direct agent-to-agent communication raises several practical
   problems: agent endpoint mobility, divergent capability schemas, lack
   of consistent policy enforcement boundaries, uncontrolled leakage of
   private context or memory, and difficulty in auditing cross-
   organizational agent interactions.

   An Agent Gateway (AGW) is a logical component deployed at domain
   boundaries to address these concerns.  An AGW terminates local agent
   sessions, evaluates access and data policies, translates intent and
   context representations, routes requests toward remote agents via
   peer AGWs, and mediates response flows back into the local domain.

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   When multiple administrative domains each run their own AGW, the
   ability for these gateways to interoperate becomes foundational.
   This interconnection is not simply IP reachability or TLS transport;
   it requires agreement on agent identity, capability advertisement,
   intent framing, policy signaling, context scoping, and audit records.

   This document first introduces the basic AGW interconnection model.
   It then describes a set of concrete use cases derived from industrial
   automation, enterprise collaboration, edge-cloud agent deployment,
   and multi-party service orchestration.  From those use cases, it
   extracts a structured set of requirements that future AGW
   interconnection protocols, data models, and policy languages should
   satisfy.

   This document is intended as input for subsequent protocol, data
   model, and semantic standardization work.

2.  Terminology

   The key terms used in this document are defined below:

   Agent Gateway (AGW)  A domain boundary component that mediates
      interactions between local agents and agents reachable through
      peer agent gateways.  The AGW enforces local policy, translates
      representations, advertises or resolves agent capabilities, and
      tracks cross-domain agent sessions.

   Intent  A structured or semi-structured description of a task
      objective that an agent is requested to fulfill.  An intent is
      distinct from raw natural language prompts and may include
      constraints, required outputs, and permitted data scope.

   Capability  A machine-readable declaration of what an agent or agent
      pool can perform, including supported intents, tool interfaces,
      data schemas, quality commitments, and policy constraints.

   Context  State associated with an agent session, including
      conversation history, intermediate task artifacts, credentials,
      and local environment bindings.  Context is generally sensitive
      and must not cross domain boundaries unless explicitly permitted.

   Administrative Domain  A trust and policy boundary under unified
      operational control.  A domain may contain multiple agents,
      multiple AGWs, or a hierarchical AGW deployment.

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   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

3.  Agent Gateway Interconnection Model

   The baseline model considered in this document is peer-to-peer
   interconnection between AGWs, where each AGW represents its local
   administrative domain.

   A local agent sends a request to its home AGW.  The home AGW
   evaluates local policy.  If the target agent resides outside the
   local domain, the home AGW forwards the request to the remote AGW.
   The remote AGW evaluates its own ingress policy, translates intent
   and context into representations understood by local agents, selects
   or routes to a suitable agent, and returns results through the same
   gateway path.

   This model assumes that the AGWs are the policy enforcement points
   for cross-domain agent interaction.  Agents inside a domain do not
   need to know the identity, location, or native protocol of remote
   agents.  They only interact with their local AGW.

   The model supports several variations:

   *  direct peering between two AGWs;

   *  transit peering through intermediate AGWs;

   *  hierarchical AGW trees (edge AGWs connecting to regional or cloud
      AGWs);

   *  federated AGW topologies with optional directory services for
      capability discovery.

   This document does not assume a single fixed topology.  Requirements
   are written to be topology-agnostic unless explicitly scoped to a use
   case.

4.  Use Cases

4.1.  Cross-Domain Task Delegation

   Scenario: An enterprise agent in Domain A needs to execute a
   specialized compliance-checking task that is only available from an
   agent service operated by a regulated partner in Domain B.

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   The local agent submits an intent to its AGW-A.  AGW-A looks up the
   target capability, determines it resides in Domain B, and opens an
   interconnection session with AGW-B.  AGW-A attaches only the minimal
   context and data required for the compliance check, subject to pre-
   negotiated data handling policy.  AGW-B validates the request against
   its ingress policy, forwards the intent to the compliance agent,
   receives the result, and returns it to AGW-A.  AGW-A logs the
   interaction and presents the result to the requesting agent.

4.2.  Federated Agent Discovery and Capability Lookup

   Scenario: An industrial orchestration agent in a factory domain needs
   to find any available agent that can perform predictive equipment
   diagnostics.  Multiple supplier domains each operate their own
   diagnostic agents and AGWs.

   The local AGW queries peer AGWs for matching capability declarations.
   Each peer AGW returns a filtered view of available agents and
   capabilities according to its own advertising policy.  The requesting
   AGW ranks candidates and returns reachable options to the local
   agent.  The agent can then select a suitable capability and initiate
   a task through the selected peer AGW.

4.3.  Multi-Party Collaborative Agent Workflow

   Scenario: A supply chain workflow requires sequential coordination
   among agents belonging to a shipper, a customs broker, and a port
   operator, each in separate administrative domains.  Each agent
   performs a distinct step and produces artifacts needed by the next
   party.

   The workflow coordinator agent starts the process through its AGW.
   Each subsequent task step is delegated to the next domain's AGW.
   AGWs mediate handoff of task state and artifacts, enforce per-step
   access controls, and record transition events.  If one party rejects
   a handoff due to policy or data issues, the AGW returns a structured
   fault back to the workflow coordinator.

5.  Requirements

   The requirements below are grouped into functional, interoperability,
   and operational categories.

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5.1.  Functional Requirements

   REQ-FUN-01: An AGW interconnection mechanism MUST support the
   forwarding of agent intent requests from a local AGW to an adjacent
   AGW, and the return of corresponding responses, task outputs, or
   structured faults.

   REQ-FUN-02: An AGW interconnection mechanism MUST support discovery
   and lookup of agent capabilities advertised by peer AGWs.  Discovery
   responses MAY be filtered by the advertising AGW's policy.

   REQ-FUN-03: An AGW MUST support policy-based selection of whether to
   forward a request, what subset of local context may be sent, and
   which adjacent AGW receives the request.

   REQ-FUN-04: An AGW MUST Support the reception of task requests, and
   based on the described task requests, determine the tasks to be
   processed and the types of tasks.  Determine whether there is an
   agent combination matching the task type within the first area of the
   current first intelligent agent boundary gateway management, and if
   such an agent combination exists, schedule this agent combination to
   handle the task.

   REQ-FUN-05: An AGW MUSTSupport the generation of task notifications
   based on the task type, without the existence of the aforementioned
   agent combination, and sending them to the adjacent intelligent agent
   boundary gateway to query whether there is a matching agent
   combination within the adjacent area.  Here, the adjacent area refers
   to the area managed by the adjacent intelligent agent boundary
   gateway.

   REQ-FUN-06: An AGW MUSTSupport the sending of the task to the
   corresponding boundary gateway upon receiving the successful matching
   information returned by the adjacent intelligent agent boundary
   gateway, so that the boundary gateway can schedule the matching
   intelligent agent combination to handle the task.

   REQ-FUN-07:An AGW MUSTSupport sending a query request to the agent
   control center when receiving the matching failure information
   returned by the adjacent agent boundary gateway, so that the agent
   control center can coordinate the handling of cross-region tasks.

5.2.  Interoperability Requirements

   REQ-INT-01: The interconnection mechanism MUST define a base machine-
   readable format for capability advertisements so that peer AGWs can
   determine whether they understand a given agent service.

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   REQ-INT-02: The interconnection mechanism SHOULD provide a standard
   way to signal translation requirements between heterogeneous agent
   interaction protocols, such as MCP, A2A, custom REST agent APIs, or
   proprietary agent runtimes.

5.3.  Operational Requirements

   REQ-OPS-01: AGWs participating in interconnection MUST expose
   standardized metrics for request volume, latency.

   REQ-OPS-02: The interconnection protocol SHOULD support structured
   logging and event reporting that can be exported to local
   observability systems without exposing sensitive agent context.

   REQ-OPS-03: An AGW MUST support rate-limiting control for peer-
   originated requests to protect local agent resources from overload.

6.  Conclusion

   This draft collects representative deployment scenarios and derives
   functional, operational, and interoperability requirements to guide
   future protocol design for AGW-to-AGW interconnection.

7.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

8.  Security Considerations

   TBD.

   .

9.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8174]  Rescorla, E., "BCP 14: Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase
              in RFC 2119 Key Words", August 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

10.  Informative References

   [RFC9000]  Iyengar, J. and M. Thomson, "QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed
              and Secure Transport", May 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9000>.

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Author's Address

   Jing Wang
   China Mobile
   No.32 XuanWuMen West Street
   Beijing
   100053
   China
   Email: wangjingjc@chinamobile.com

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