Communication Protocol Engineering

Miroslav Popovic

Preference :

Originally, the term protocol was related to the customs and regulations dealing with diplomatic formality, precedence, and etiquette. A protocol is actually the original draft, minutes, or record from which a document, especially a treaty, is prepared, e.g., an agreement between states. Today, in the
context of computer networks, the term protocol is interpreted as a set of rules governing the format of messages that are exchanged between computers. Sometimes, especially if we want to be more specific, we use the term communication protocol instead.
The title of this book, Communication Protocol Engineering , is used to emphasize the process of developing communication protocols. Like other engineering disciplines, communication protocol engineering typically
• Requirements and analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Test and verification
The process as described in this book is ideally the union of the UML (Unified Modeling Language)-driven unified development process (Booch et al., 1998), Cleanroom engineering (formal system design verification and statistical usage testing), and some elements of Agile programming (particularly unit testing based on JUnit). Of course, each organization should adapt and tune the process to its own needs and goals. For example, one organization may stick to the UML-driven unified development process, another may prefer Cleanroom engineering, yet another may use the combination of both, and so forth.