TCP, UDP, and Sockets: Volume 3: The Service-level Specification

Despite more than 30 years of research on protocol specification, the major protocols deployed in the Internet, such as TCP, are described only in informal prose RFCs and executable code. In part this is because the scale and complexity of these protocols makes them challenging targets for formal descriptions, and because techniques for mathematically rigorous (but appropriately loose) specification are not in common use. In this work we show how these difficulties can be addressed. We develop a high-level specification for TCP and the Sockets API, describing the byte-stream service that TCP provides to users, expressed in the formalised mathematics of the HOL proof assistant. This complements our previous low-level specification of the protocol internals, and makes it possible for the first time to state what it means for TCP to be correct: that the protocol implements the service. We define a precise abstraction function between the models and validate it by testing, using verified testing infrastructure within HOL. Some errors may remain, of course, especially as our resources for testing were limited, but it would be straightforward to use the method on a larger scale. This is a pragmatic alternative to full proof, providing reasonable confidence at a relatively low entry cost. Together with our previous validation of the low-level model, this shows how one can rigorously tie together concrete implementations, low-level protocol models, and specifications of the services they claim to provide, dealing with the complexity of real-world protocols throughout. Similar techniques should be applicable, and even more valuable, in the design of new protocols (as we illustrated elsewhere, for a MAC protocol for the SWIFT optically switched network). For TCP and Sockets, our specifications had to capture the historical complexities, whereas for a new protocol design, such specification and testing can identify unintended complexities at an early point in the design.