DyCAT-a modular approach to specification and implementation of high speed transfer systems

The authors have built a protocol engineering concept which eases the development of communication software by providing engineering solutions to the problem of developing protocols. Since standardized FDTs are not suitable to be used for formal specification, performance analysis as well as implementation purposes they have selected higher level Petri nets which can be used for all three applications. The paper starts with a brief description of the protocol engineering approach. It follows an illustration of the flexible communication architecture, called DyCAT (Dynamically Configurable and adaptive Transport System). It compares the performance of the special purpose and static TCP/IP protocol suite with the general purpose and programmable XTP. In addition to the protocol inherent influence the impact of the implementation onto the performance is evaluated. The paper concludes with a summary and an outlook on further work.