Modular design principles for protocols with an application to the transport layer

Author

Shankar, A. Udaya

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Maryland Univ., College Park, MD, USA

Volume

79

Issue

12

fYear

1991

fDate

12/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1687

Lastpage

1707

Abstract

A method for specifying services, specifying protocols, and constructing protocol specifications by stepwise refinement of service specifications is presented. The method is based on assertional reasoning and a refinement relation between state transition systems. The method is demonstrated on the transport layer, which is used by application protocols such as electronic mail, file transfer, remote login, etc. A succession of specifications is constructed, starting from a very abstract transport service and culminating in specific transport protocols comparable to TCP and ISO TP4. Each specification offers both connection management and connection-specific data transfer. It is shown how any connection-independent data transfer protocol can be transformed to offer connection-specific data transfer service

Keywords

computer networks; protocols; assertional reasoning; connection management; connection-specific data transfer; electronic mail; file transfer; protocol specifications; protocols; refinement relation; remote login; state transition systems; stepwise refinement; transport layer; Access protocols; Application software; Coaxial components; Computer network management; Computer networks; Distributed databases; Electronic mail; Optical fiber communication; Physics computing; Transport protocols;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Proceedings of the IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9219

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/5.119547

Filename

119547