Termination properties of TCP's connection management procedures

B Han, J Billington - International Conference on Application and Theory of …, 2005 - Springer
B Han, J Billington
International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, 2005Springer
Abstract The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the most widely used transport protocol
in the Internet, providing a reliable data transfer service to many applications. This paper
analyses TCP's Connection Management procedures for correct termination and absence of
deadlocks. The protocol is assumed to be operating over a reordering lossless channel and
is modelled using Coloured Petri nets. The following connection management scenarios are
examined using state space analysis: client-server and simultaneous opening; orderly …
Abstract
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the most widely used transport protocol in the Internet, providing a reliable data transfer service to many applications. This paper analyses TCP’s Connection Management procedures for correct termination and absence of deadlocks. The protocol is assumed to be operating over a reordering lossless channel and is modelled using Coloured Petri nets. The following connection management scenarios are examined using state space analysis: client-server and simultaneous opening; orderly release; and abortion. The results demonstrate that TCP terminates correctly for client-server and simultaneous connection establishment, orderly release after the connection is established and aborting of connections. However, we discover a deadlock when connection release is initiated before the connection has been fully established when operating over a reordering lossless channel.
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