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A methodology for constructing communication protocols with multiple concurrent functions

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Abstract

A methodology is presented for the construction of communication protocols which perform several distinct functions simultaneously. The construction of such a multi-function protocol consists of three steps: (1) the development of component protocols for the different functions, (2) the integration of component protocols into a merged protocol, and (3) the specification of operational relationship among the component protocols. The conditions required for the resulting merged protocol to retain the safety properties, such as freedom from unspecified receptions, freedom from deadlocks, and boundedness, of the component protocols are discussed. The methodology is simple and facilitates the reuse of existing protocols. Two examples are given to illustrate its usage: a full-duplex data transfer protocol and another data transfer protocol with pipelining and flow control.

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Author notes

  1. Huai-An Lin

    Present address: Bell Communications Research, 444 Hoes Lane, 08854, Piscataway, NJ, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, M/S FT-10, 98195, Seattle, WA, USA

    Huai-An Lin

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  1. Huai-An Lin
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Additional information

Huai-An Lin received the B.S.E.E. degree from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 1977, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer and information science from the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, in 1981 and 1983, respectively. From 1983 to 1985, he was with the Gould Research Center at Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Since 1985, he has been an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. His research interests include computer communication networks, distributed systems, and software engineering. Dr. Lin is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery.

This research was partially supported by the Graduate School Research Fund of University of Washington

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Lin, HA. A methodology for constructing communication protocols with multiple concurrent functions. Distrib Comput 3, 23–40 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01788565

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