Developing dynamic-reconfigurable communication protocol stacks using Java

This paper proposes the development of a dynamic‐reconfigurable protocol stack, which allows the programmer to create, to remove, and to replace protocol modules during their operation. Moreover, this protocol stack also aims to preserve the module state, such as the data structures that manage the existing connections. To achieve these goals, a Java‐based component framework is developed so that the programmers are able to implement their components under the proposed framework. This framework can dynamically reconfigure the components at a safe period and can help the components transfer their states, and the dynamic reconfiguration is transparent to the user application running on top of the stack. To demonstrate the component framework, a TCP component is implemented. While maintaining active connections for the user application, the TCP component is able to be dynamically replaced by another version. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.