1985 Reports

A Methodology tor Specification-Based Performance Analysis of Communication Protocols

Nounou, Nihal; Yemini, Yechiam

This paper presents a methodology for automatically analyzing the performance of communication protocols. The methodology consists of three steps. First, a protocol designer uses a formal algebraic method to specify the functional behavior of each of the communicating processes involved in the protocol. Second, the concurrent behavior of the protocol is automatically computed. Third, the protocol designer formally specifies timing requirements and/or performance measures and requests their analysis. This analysis is carried out automatically from the formal specification of the protocol augmented with some timing information. Th. methodology is implemented in ANALYST: an automated protocol performance analyzer. A connection establishment and a data transfer protocol are used to demonstrate the methodology. By analyzing the timing requirements of these protocols, optimal settings of their system parameters are obtained. Results obtained from analyzing their performance measures are shown to agree with manual results previously reported in the literature.