A bridging methodology for Internet protocols standards development.

Abstract

An Internet protocol must follow a certain standard set by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). Internet Standards are plain text documents that are often hard for implementers to interpret. Hence, IETF requires at least two distinct, interoperable implementations before accepting a proposal as an Internet standard. To improve the quality of the IETF standards, we propose a bridging methodology which uses a semi-formal and a formal description technique to bridge from English to a more precise specification. Our bridging methodology (denoted USHLTD) uses UCMs (Use Case Maps) as the requirements source notation (a semi-formal description technique) and SDL (Specification and Description Language, an executable international standard formal description technique) as the design destination notation. To validate USHLTD, we conduct a case study on a widely deployed Internet routing protocol of great current interest called OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) and a key function, LSA (Link State Advertisement) refreshment. We analyse the results of applying our approach to the case study, and make recommendations for further research and validation.