Simulation of lower layers of communication protocols using Ada

From the smallest microcomputer to the largest mainframe computer, data communication capabilities are and will be a major factor in the success and usefulness of the computer systems. The need for larger systems to process data created on the small computers, the need to move subsets of data to small computers access larger computers for other capabilities, and the need for growth in hardware capability are all major reasons that data communication is so important to today's technology.As data communication is the backbone of today's technology, it will play a leading role in governing the changes in the technology of the future. Hence the knowledge of data communication becomes a very important aspect.In this thesis emphasis has been given to simulate the lower layers of communication protocols using Ada as the base language. The language Ada is chosen because of it's capability of providing parallel processing, which is an inherent property of the data communication. Ada is a complex, general purpose programming language that provides an excellent concurrent programing facility called task, that is based on rendezvous concept.Simulation is an excellent way to teach & understand concepts, which otherwise becomes infeasible to understand. Now a days more and more communication details is embedded in the hardware, and hence what is going inside the computer, to provide communication between two computers or just plain data communication, is becoming transparent to the user. However, this does not eliminate the need to know about the functional characteristics of the protocols, which are the rules to provide an effective and reliable communication environment, rather the need to understand protocols is increasing as more and more computer vendors are coming out with their own products. Thanks to the ISO (International Standard Organization), which has come with the standard for the Computer to Computer Communication, but still protocol analysis and design will play a very important role. The field of protocol conversion has grown tremendously in order to provide communication across heterogeneous systems using message communication will to the field of protocol which now a days is an different protocols.Here in this study, communication backbone is simulated in Ada using its concurrent processing capabilities and it is tried to show how a data or aMessage communication will actually take place. This study can serve as a blue print to improve this in order to cater to the field of protocol analysis and protocol conversion, which now a days is an important facet of the data communication industry.Department of Computer ScienceThesis (M.S.