Protocol validation - principles and applications

Abstract

We describe two techniques that have been developed for automated protocol validation, reachability analysis and random walk validation. A number of case studies are presented in order to demonstrate how the techniques can be applied to protocols of varying complexity. The effectiveness of automated protocol validation is discussed in terms of a simple model that shows why analysis of a restricted sample of the states in the reachable state space is sufficient to identify most errors when the latter are limited complexity. © 1992.