AN ALF COMMUNICATION ARCHITECTURE - DESIGN AND AUTOMATED IMPLEMENTATION

The application level framing (ALF) principle states that information should be packetized by the application into application data units (A DU's), each of which should be at the same time a unit of transmission , a unit of control, and a unit of processing, This paper describes a communication system architecture based on the ALF principle, which th en attempts to maximize what might be gained from using ADU's, In this architecture, protocols are tailored to application requirements, i.e ., to ADU types, In a first approximation, we consider three specific requirements, namely, in-order delivery, reliable delivery, and real-t ime delivery, ALF-based systems promise performance gains; however, im plementing them in practice might be a complex task, Therefore, we hav e developed a compiler that automatically generates ALF-based communic ation systems starting from formal specification of applications, We h ave used this compiler to generate protocols tailored to three specifi c applications. Experimental results show that the gains are linked to application ''complexity.''