A Configurable and Extensible Transport Protocol

The ability to configure transport protocols from collections of smaller software modules allows the characteristics of the protocol to be customized for a specific application or network technology. This paper describes a configurable transport protocol system called CTP in which microprotocols implementing individual attributes of transport can be combined into a composite protocol that realizes the desired overall functionality. In addition to describing the overall architecture of CTP and its microprotocols, this paper also presents experiments on both local area and wide area platforms that illustrate the flexibility of CTP and how its ability to match more closely application needs can result in better application performance. The prototype implementation of CTP has been built using the C version of the Cactus microprotocol composition framework running on Linux.