CUPID: A Protocol Development Environment

This paper describes research conducted towards Columbia's unified Protocol Implementation and Design (CUPID) environment. CUPID research aims at the integration and automation of protocol design and implementation tools. CUPID uses an algebraic representation of protocols based, in part, upon a variant of Milner's calculus of communicating systems (CCS). Communication behaviors are represented in terms of expressions of a universal algebra. A key notion to the automation of protocol development functions is that of a valuation over the algebra of communication behaviors. A valuation maps communication behaviors to expressions in other algebras (e.g., an algebra of delay distributions used for performance analysis). This allows one to proceed and compute attributes of communication behaviors over the respective algebras using a formal valuation process. We provide a brief introduction to CCS in the context of modelling protocol behaviors. This is followed by a brief summary of how the algebraic valuation mechanism may be used to support the different functions of a protocol design environment: multiple concurrent specifications, automated functional and performance analysis and automated test generation and performance simulation

A Methodology for Specification-Based Performance Analysis of Protocols

The designer of communication protocols has to formulate rules to govern the communications between processes that are distributed; share common resources concurrently and asynchronously; communicate through unreliable channels that incur random delays; and behave in a time-dependent fashion. The first step is to formally specify the behavior of each of the communicating processes in the protocol. The protocol designer then has to analyze their concurrent behavior to ensure that it satisfies given functional requirements. He also has to analyze their timing behavior to ensure that is meets given timing requirements. The author addresses the specification and analysis of timing requirements and performance measures of protocols

An Automated Performance Analysis of a Two Phase Locking Protocol

ANALYST, an interactive protocol performance analyzer, is used to analyze the performance of a two phase locking protocol. ANALYST implements a specification-based methodology for performance analysis of protocols which extracts from an algebraic specification of a protocol a model of its timing behavior. Any timing requirement or performance measure that can be formally specified in terms of attributes of this timing behavior can be thus analyzed. An algebraic specification of a two phase locking protocol that uses time-out for deadlock detection is provided. Two timing requirements necessary for its efficient performance are specified and analyzed yielding optimal settings of protocol parameters (such as timeout rate). Additionally, the mean response time and probability of deadlock of the protocol are specified and analyzed. This, to the best knowledge of the authors, is the first automated, analytic performance analysis of such a high-level protocol

Algebraic Specification-Based Performance Analysis or Communication Protocols

Safe and live protocols have been shown to exhibit timing errors. To avoid such errors, timing requirements of protocols should be specified and verified. In this paper, a method for mapping algebraic functional behavior descriptions into corresponding timing behavior descriptions is introduced. Constraints on timing behavior are then expressed and used in specifying and verifying protocol timing requirements. In addition, various protocol performance measures are defined and analyzed. Using the Alternating Bit protocol as an example, an upper bound on the protocol's timeout rate, such that it meets a given timeout requirement, is computed and its maximum throughput and mean transfer time are analyzed

Development Tools for Communication Protocols: An Overview

This paper presents an overview of commonly used protocol development tools falling under two categories: construction tools and validation tools. Construction tools are used to develop protocols from specifications to working systems. They include tools for specification synthesis and implementation. Validation tools are used to analyze protocols behavior. They include tools for formal verification, performance evaluation and testing. For each tool, we examine the key underlying issues, outline the main approaches, and illustrate its application to a send-and wait protocol

Development Tools For Communication Protocols

The past decade has witnessed a surge in research efforts aimed at developing tools to aid the designer of communication protocols. Most of these efforts have been directed towards designing individual tools. Recently, however, there has been a growing interest in building development environments that support an integrated set of such tools. This paper presents a survey of commonly used protocol development tools. Two categories of protocol development tools are examined: construction tools to successively refine communication protocols from specifications to working systems and validation tools to assess whether the refinements meet functional and performance protocol objectives. Construction tools surveyed include tools for specification, synthesis, and implementation. Validation tools surveyed include tools for formal verification, performance analysis and testing. A simple send-and-wait protocol is used as an example throughout the paper

A Methodology tor Specification-Based Performance Analysis of Communication Protocols

This paper presents a methodology for automatically analyzing the performance of communication protocols. The methodology consists of three steps. First, a protocol designer uses a formal algebraic method to specify the functional behavior of each of the communicating processes involved in the protocol. Second, the concurrent behavior of the protocol is automatically computed. Third, the protocol designer formally specifies timing requirements and/or performance measures and requests their analysis. This analysis is carried out automatically from the formal specification of the protocol augmented with some timing information. Th. methodology is implemented in ANALYST: an automated protocol performance analyzer. A connection establishment and a data transfer protocol are used to demonstrate the methodology. By analyzing the timing requirements of these protocols, optimal settings of their system parameters are obtained. Results obtained from analyzing their performance measures are shown to agree with manual results previously reported in the literature