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Protean Protocol Prototyping Library (PROTOLIB) OVERVIEW Protolib is not so much a library as it is a toolkit. The goal of the Protolib is to provide a set of simple, cross-platform C++ classes that allow development of network protocols and applications that can run on different platforms and in network simulation environments. Although Protolib is principally for research purposes, the code has been constructed to provide robust, nefficient performance and adaptability to real applications. Currently Protolib supports most Unix platforms (including MacOS X) and WIN32 platforms. The most recent version also supports building Protolib-based code for the ns-2 simulation environment. The OPNET simulation tool has also been supported in the past and could be once again with a small amount of effort. CLASSES: ProtoAddress: Network address container class with support for IPv4, IPv6, and "SIM" address types. Also includes functions for name/address resolution. ProtoSocket: Network socket container class that provides consistent interface for use of operating system (or simulation environment) transport sockets. Provides support for asynchronous notification to ProtoSocket::Listeners. The ProtoSocket class may be used stand-alone, or with other classes described below. A ProtoSocket may be instantiated as either a UDP or TCP socket. ProtoTimer: This is a generic timer class which will notify a ProtoTimer::Listener upon timeout. ProtoTimerMgr: This class manages ProtoTimer instances when they are "activated". The ProtoDispatcher (below) derives from this to manage ProtoTimers for an application. (The ProtoSimAgent base class contains a ProtoTimerMgr to similarly manage timers for a simulation instance). ProtoTree: Flexible implementation of a Patricia tree data structure. Includes a ProtoTree::Item which may be derived from or used as a container for whatever data structures and application may require. ProtoRouteTable: Class based on the ProtoTree Patricia tree to store routing table information. Uses the ProtoAddress class to store network routing addresses. It's a pretty dumbed-down routing table at the moment, but may be enhanced in the future. Example use of the ProtoTree. ProtoRouteMgr: Base class for providing a conistent interface to manage operating system (or other) routing engines. ProtoPipe: Socket-like mechanism (with both datagram and stream support) useful for interprocess communications (uses Unix domain sockets on Unix, other stuff on Win32 & WinCE) ProtoCap: Interface class for raw MAC-layer packet capture. Platform implementations of this class vary including a "pcap" based implementation. ProtoDetour: Inbound/outbound packet _interception_ class. Platform implementations vary ... works with firewall stuff. Win32 version based around NDIS intermediate driver in progress. ProtoDispatcher: This class provides a core around which Unix and Win32 applications using Protolib can be implemented. It's "Run()" method provides a "main loop" which uses the "select()" system call on Unix and the similar "MsgWaitForMultipleObjectsEx()" system call on Win32. It is planned to eventually provide some built-in support for threading in the future (e.g. the ProtoDispatcher::Run() method might execute in a thread, dispatching events to a parent thread). ProtoApp: Provides a base class for implementing Protolib-based command-line applications. Note that "ProtoApp" and "ProtoSimAgent" are designed such that subclasses can be derived from either to reuse the same code in either a real-world applications or as an "agent" (entity) within a network simulation environment (e.g. ns-2, OPNET). A "background" command is included for Win32 to launch the app without a terminal window. ProtoSimAgent: Base class for simulation agent derivations. Currently an ns-2 agent base class is derived from this, but it is possible that other simulation environments (e.g. OPNET, Qualnet) might be supported in a similar fashion. NsProtoSimAgent: Simulation agent base class for creating ns-2 instantiations of Protolib-based network protocols and applications. ProtoExample: Example class which derives either from ProtoApp or NsProtoSimAgent, depending upon compile-time macro definitions. It provides equivalent functionality in either the simulation environment or as a real-world command-line application. It demonstrates the use/operation of ProtoSocket based UDP transmission/reception, a ProtoTimer, and an example ProtoSocket-based TCP client-server exchange. (NOTE: TCP operation is not yet supported in the simulation environment. This will completed in coming months. I plan to extend ns-2 TCP agents to support actual transfer of user data to support this.) OTHER: The Protolib code also includes some simple, general purpose debugging routines which can output to "stderr" or optionally log to a specified file. See "protoDebug.h" for details. There are also some supporting classes not described here and some work to be done. For example, the ProtoRouteMgr includes implementations for Linux and BSD (incl. MacOS), but not yet for WIN32 (This is work in progress). Also, more complete documentation, including Doxygen-based code documentation and a "Developer's Guide" with examples needs to be provided. Brian Adamson <adamson@itd.nrl.navy.mil rel='nofollow' onclick='return false;'> 30 September 2003