The Internet of Agents Vijoy Pandey, Ph.D January 22, 2025 The Internet of Agents: an open, interoperable internet for agent-agent and agent-human quantum-safe communication Forty years ago, Cisco helped create the biggest platform shift in computing history. This platform was The Internet but what it really enabled was distributed computing at global scale. It completely transformed the way all humans did business and the way we interacted socially. Cisco built it by being a software vendor first—developing software that discovered, authen- ticated, connected and secured individuals, machines and software. We built it in an open 1 and interoperable manner and established industry standards, quickly releasing reference implementations that became the benchmark for Internet infrastructure. The cloud-first and mobile-first platform paradigm shift emerged next, about two decades ago, built as a platform layer above the Internet. Hyperscalers (cloud players, social giants and app giants) built walled gardens, and a Cloud Internet formed above the Internet with Cloud Native discovery, authentication, connectivity and security built as net new over-the- top software services. Today, we stand at yet another inflection point—the move to distributed agentic computing. One that will drive a platform paradigm shift larger than all other platforms in the past. This distributed agentic computation platform needs a new secure connectivity layer that sits above the current cloud native connectivity layer: the Internet of Agents. Figure 1: A new Internet is forming to enable distributed AgentiQ2 computation 2 Cisco, Outshift, and partners need to pioneer the Internet of Agents or the AgentiQ Internet which will be open, interoperable and, quantum safe for agent-to-agent and agent-to-human communication. 1 It didn’t start out by being open. Remember AOL? Cisco worked hard to make the Internet open. 2 The Q in AgentiQ is to enforce the proposition of a quantum-safe world. ©2025 Outshift by Cisco and/or its afÏliates. All rights reserved. 3