An acyclic expansion algorithm for fast protocol validation

For the development of communications software composed of many modules, protocol validation is considered essential to detect errors in the interactions among the modules. Protocol validation techniques previously proposed have required validation time that is too long for many actual protocols. The authors propose a novel fast protocol validation technique to overcome this drawback. The proposed technique is to construct the minimum acyclic form of state transitions in individual processes of the protocol, and to detect protocol errors such as system deadlocks and channel overflows fast. The authors also present a protocol validation system based on the technique to confirm its feasibility and show validation results for some actual protocols. As a result, the protocol validation system is expected to improve productivity in the development and maintenance of communications software