A method for producing requirement-specific protocol graphs in a flexible network architecture

Abstract

Future-Internet research tries to improve the Internet in various ways. Functional-block-based approaches use flexible network stacks called protocol graphs which are created from functional blocks which encapsulate network functionalities. This article presents a method for producing requirement-specific protocol graphs which organizes the problem domain into the separate concerns of modeling functional blocks with impact functions, using those impact functions to evaluate the impact of a protocol graph, searching through the set of possible protocol graphs to select those protocol graphs which fulfill the requirements, and then reducing that set of protocol graphs to the most suitable one. Algorithms for the impact evaluation, search and selection, and optimization methods along with their relations are presented. An example is also presented to further clarify and describe our approach.