Approach for rapid protocol development: Experiences with the proposed fibre channel standard

Abstract

This paper describes a rapid protocol development approach that enables protocol verification through the design and development stages. Feedback from verification analysis can be very useful to protocol designers, but it is often difficult to stay current with the protocol's development. Our approach facilitates quick turnaround in the development and verification process - even before the protocol is stable. American National Standards Committee X3T9.3 has chartered the development of Fibre Channel (FC), a proposed standard for serial I/O channel capable of supporting a wide range of upper layer protocols. Despite the complexity of FC, we have used our approach to both verify it and to produce a software and hardware implementation of the protocol. We describe features that enable rapid turnaround in response to revisions of the standard and maintenance of a stable suite of test cases for the standard. The approach has also been applied to other protocols.