Algorithms for Automated Protocol Validation

This paper studies the four basic types of algorithm that, over the last ten years, have been developed for the automated validation of the logical consistency of data communication protocols. The algorithms are compared on memory usage, CPU time requirements, and the quality, or coverage, of the search for errors. It is shown that the best algorithm, according to above criteria, can be improved further in a significant way, by avoiding a known performance bottleneck. The algorithm derived in this manner works in a fixed size memory arena (it will never run out of memory), it is up to two orders of magnitude faster then the previous methods, and it has superior coverage of the state space when analyzing large protocol systems.