Functional description and formal specification of a generic gateway.

Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with the design of a generic gateway which provides an interoperability between dissimilar computer networks. The generic gateway is decomposed with subnetwork dependent blocks and subnetwork independent blocks. The subnetwork dependent block is responsible to communicate with subnetwork nodes. The subnetwork independent block is responsible to interconnect the subnetwork dependent blocks. The communications between subnetwork dependent and independent blocks are done by service access points which defined independently to any specific subnetworks. Formal specification of a generic gateway is provided by LOTOS. The generic gateway specification is tested by a verifiable test method which is proposed in this dissertation. The correctness of the specification has been verified while the specified model is simulated. The major difference between conventional simulation and the verifiable test is in the objective of simulation. In the verifiable test method, the semantical properties are examined during the simulation process. The tester can be either human observer or other process.