Stephen McQuistin, Vivian Band, Dejice Jacob, and Colin Perkins
Proceedings of the IFIP Networking Conference,
June 2021.
DOI:10.23919/IFIPNetworking52078.2021.9472829
Use of formal protocol description techniques and code generation can
reduce bugs in network packet parsing code. However, such techniques
are themselves complex, and don’t see wide adoption in the protocol
standards development community, where the focus is on consensus
building and human-readable specifications. We explore the utility
and effectiveness of new techniques for describing protocol data,
specifically designed to integrate with the standards development
process, and discuss how they can be used to generate code that is
safer and more trustworthy, while maintaining correctness and
performance.
Download: mcquistin2021investigating.pdf