Section: Scientific Foundations

Protocols

Network protocols are fundamental for networking. They provide basic services (e.g. routing) through constructing and maintaining distributed data structures, such as spanning tree, shortest path, dominating set, etc. Many networking protocols have been developed. Typical examples include various routing protocols, such as DSDV (Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector Routing) [38] , OLSR (Optimized Link-State Routing) [30] , AODV (Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector Routing) [39] , and VRR (Virtual Ring Routing) [23] , as well as self-configuration and self-organization protocols, such as ASCNET [24] or FISCO [36] .

Although network protocols are crucial for networking, their construction is a complex and error prone task, when more and more constraints (e.g. mobility, energy efficiency etc.) have to be taken into account. The challenges originate from the inherent complexity of developing correct program codes and from the distributed nature of networked systems.

Since protocols usually describe the behavior of nodes under events, such as messages received, they can be easily written in rule-based languages. Our objective is to show that the declarative specification of particular network protocols, can lead to efficient behavior. Thus through implementing protocols in declarative rule languages, we can reduce the inherent complexity of programming for network protocols.

To help cope with the distributed nature of networked systems, auxiliary tools need to be developed, such as protocol debugging tools, automatic protocol verification tools, etc. Actually many network protocols can be specified in declarative rule languages and the semantics of these languages can be strictly defined, so it seems promising to develop auxiliary tools based on declarative languages.