Multi-Subsystem Protocol Architectures: Motivation and Experience with an Adapter-Based Approach

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Date
1995Author
Krupczak, Bobby
Ammar, Mostafa H. (Mostafa Hamed)
Calvert, Kenneth L.
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Protocol software is often difficult, cumbersome, and expensive to
implement and test in today's computing environments. To reduce this
difficulty, several things are done: communications software is
commonly subdivided into layers and organized into a protocol graph;
it is developed within a protocol or networking subsystem; and it is
often ported rather than developed from scratch. Inherent differences
in the multitude of protocol subsystems offer a dizzying array of
features, functionality, and drawbacks; their differences often reduce
the portability and efficiency of protocol code. In this paper, we
consider the differences in subsystems and their effect on the
portability and performance of protocol implementations. We propose
an approach for combining the `better'' features of protocol
subsystems by constructing protocol graphs composed of protocols
residing in different subsystems.