ICC'83 COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS SESSION: AN OVERVIEW.

Abstract

It is becoming more and more widely recognized that communication protocols - and particularly their correct functioning - play a key role in ensuring computer-communication system reliability. This greater recognition is being matched by an increasing effort to specify protocols precisely and to develop tools to free protocols from errors. Most of these tools depend on a machine-executable protocol definition. A framework is presented relating these tools to one another and to the underlying specification. The various papers in this session - each reporting recent developments in an active area of protocol research - are then summarized. Finally, a list of some important topics in need of research is given.