The structuring of systems using upcalls
Proceedings of the tenth ACM symposium on Operating systems principles
The Von Neumann straitjacket: the process construct
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
A cross-layer signaling and middleware platform for multi-interface mobile devices
EUC'07 Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Emerging direction in embedded and ubiquitous computing
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This thesis is about the efficiency of protocol layering. It examines the technique of protocol layering in an abstract way and finds two major sources of inefficiency in protocol implementations which are caused by the imposition on them of a layered structure. The conventional approach to making layered protocol implementations run efficiently -- for avoiding the sources of inefficiency discussed herein -- are all independent of the protocol specification, and thus all decrease the value of the protocol specification as a guide for implementing protocols. We introduce a new means of avoiding the problems of layered protocol implementations which operates within the domain of the protocol specification. We allow an increase in the flow of state information between the layers of a layered protocol implementation in a very controlled manner, so as to decrease the modularity of the protocol architecture as little as possible. The increased flow of information is specified in the protocol specification as a model of all the layered protocols that use the protocol being specified, called the "usage mode." Since our approach decreases the rigidity of the layered structure without entirely eliminating it, we coin the term "Soft Layering" for the approach.