PROTOCOL CONVERTER GENERATION USING THE STS APPROACH

During the past four years, the authors have developed the Synchronizi ng Transition Set (STS) approach to solve protocol conversion problems for interconnecting heterogeneous computer networks. The STS approach is a 5-step formal algorithm: given service specifications of target protocols as its input, it derives a protocol converter specification as output. Several variations of the STS algorithm have been studied, and it was formally proven that all of these variations support the sa me correctness properties [1-4], such as conformity, liveness and tran sparency properties. Recently, the STS algorithm has been fully implem ented in an STS protocol converter generation package. The package is written in the C language under a standard UNIX operating system. It n eeds less than 1000 lines of C statements to fully implement the STS a lgorithm. Moreover, to generate a converter between some classical exa mple protocols, such as ABP (alternating bit protocol) and go-back-n p rotocols, it only takes a few seconds to derive a correct protocol con verter specification using a desktop workstation. In this paper, the S TS algorithm and its implementation are presented.