EZnet: A Framework for Rapid Protocol Protyping

Building prototypes of new low-level protocols or extensions to existing protocols is a challenge. Mostly development has to take place within kernel space, and therefore the prototypes are bound to one specific operating system or even a certain version of the operating system. Further, the environment provided by operating systems evolved and are designed to be performant and therefore often far from being intuitive or easy to understand. But for many prototypes, cutting edge performance is not required, and proving functionality and demonstration of feasibility are the key points why prototypes are built. This is where our new object oriented protocol framework EZnet steps in. We provide a complete and working JAVA TCP/IP stack in the user space, designed with clean interfaces and abstracted protocol behavior. The Java VM provides all advantages of managed execution environments and platform independence, of course imposing a certain overhead in performance and real-time reaction time. Extensions to the existing protocols provided by the framework and inclusion of new protocols or functionality is therefore very intuitive and straightforward in comparison to kernel or driver development in OS kernels, and code reuse and utilization of common protocol patterns are encouraged by design. In addition, EZnet provides a plug-in layer for simulators, so simulating and running a protocol is possible with the same codebase and implementation, ensuring that the simulation and the run-time prototype are exactly the same. We present the design and the implementation of the framework, along with an example how AODV can easily be realized using the framework.