A METHODOLOGY FOR THE SYNTHESIS OF COMMUNICATION GATEWAYS FOR NETWORK INTEROPERABILITY

Because of the proliferation of proprietary network architectures and protocols, there is an urgent need for constructing communication gateways to ensure the interoperability among such networks and protocols. This interoperability will guarantee a wider access to value-added services and applications in today's information technology market. In this paper, we present a gateway synthesis method that considers the common services of two different proprietary protocols and services to obtain a gateway that can provide a transparent reconciliatory interface between the various networks. Our method starts by computing the greatest common service definition of two service definitions. Then, two sets of traces related to appropriate observation points are obtained and then synchronized. Finally, a synchronizing finite state machine converter is synthesized. An illustrative example is also provided.