Research note: Verifying the progress properties of a heterogeneous protocol system in an internetworking environment

  • Authors:

  • Debashis Saha

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jadavpur University, Calcutta-700 032, India

  • Venue:
  • Computer Communications
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

The rapid proliferation of computer networks has resulted in numerous homogeneous and heterogeneous networks co-existing today. To achieve interoperability between them, internetworking through the use of gateways has become a priority. The basic problem in designing a heterogeneous internetwork is the mismatch between the internal architectures of the component networks, known as protocol mismatch. An immediate solution is the incorporation of a protocol conversion mechanism into the gateway, giving rise to a heterogeneous protocol system consisting of two incompatible peer processes communicating via a converter sited between them. Verification of this system is necessary to ensure the proper design of the converter and the progress properties of the heterogeneous protocol. Using a communicating finite state machine (CFSM) model, we have studied the dynamics of a general heterogeneous protocol system, and we present a formal procedure to perform a fast reachability analysis of the system for the purposes of its verification. Performing a reachability analysis of a heterogeneous protocol system is a new dimension in protocol converter design, and the verification algorithm presented in this paper - a remarkable improvement upon the conventional technique - employs the reduction approach of a state transition graph representation of the CFSMs involved, hence the name reduced reachability analysis.