The Totem protocol development environment

Abstract

We describe the protocol development environment for the Totem protocol, a fault-tolerant communication protocol that provides fast reliable ordered message delivery and membership services. The protocol development environment is a distributed discrete-event simulator that provides a testbed for the controlled testing and debugging of the Totem protocol. Unlike many other protocol simulation environments, the Totem protocol development environment directly executes the implementation code of the protocol being simulated instead of a model of the protocol. Executing the implementation code of the protocol in the simulator facilitates both the testing and debugging of the protocol. Modifications and design changes to the protocol are directly reflected in both the simulation and the implementation.<>