Agents communicate with the PingAccess policy server through the PingAccess Agent Protocol (PAAP), which defines the possible interactions between agents and the policy server. Agents have identifying names and a shared secret to authenticate with the policy server. Agents do not need to be unique. There can be multiple agents using the same name and secret, and they are all treated equally by the policy server. This is useful in complex deployments where unique agents are difficult to manage. Agents can be assigned as the destination for one or more applications by name.