CP-Nets Based Methodology for Integrating Functional Verification and Performance Analysis of Network Protocol

It is very risky to improve the performance of network protocols without the assurance of its functional correctness, especially for protocols that with complicated and concurrent behaviors. However, in most of current model based protocol engineering projects, two independent models are adopted for individual functional verification and performance analysis, which could not guarantee the performance model satisfying the functionality correctness, and usually cost more in protocol design and maintenance. In this paper, we propose a colored Petri nets (CP-nets) based method to integrate functional verification and performance analysis procedures, and focus on the BitTorrent protocol as a representative example to illustrate the practical effectiveness of our proposed methodology. That is, the functional CP-nets models of BitTorrent protocol are constructed and validated firstly, and then performance related temporal constrains are added into above models to form its performance CP-nets models for corresponding simulation based performance analysis. Because such closely related CP-nets models are utilized where every occurrence sequence in the performance model corresponds to an occurrence sequence in its functional model, it is guaranteed that both models satisfy the functionality requirements of protocol systems. Besides, model maintenance becomes more convenient.