Constraint-based structuring of network protocols

Summary. The complexity of designing protocols has led to compositional techniques for designing and verifying protocols. We propose a technique based on the notion of parallel composition of protocols. We view a composite protocol as an interleaved execution of the component protocols subject to a set of constraints. Using the constraints as building blocks, we define several constraint-based structures with each structure combining the properties of the component protocols in a different way. For instance, the component protocols of a multifunction protocol can be structured so that the composite protocol performs all the individual functions concurrently or performs only one of them depending on the order of initiation of the component protocols. We provide inference rules to infer safety and liveness properties of the composite protocol. Some properties are derived from those of the component protocols while others are derived from the structuring mechanism (the set of constraints) used to combine the component protocols. Received: October 1996 / Accepted: August 1998