This paper describes a Protocol Finite State Machine (PFSM) for implementing communication protocols. Our objective is to develop and implement a general model for communication protocols based on the principles of finite state machines and make the design of transport entity more modular and easier to maintain and modify. We have designed an inference method and knowledge representation, based on semantic networks, for implementing this model. We have added interactive capability and automatic error detection to check for invalid external events and other types of errors in our model. PFSM consists of one or more knowledge bases depicting the state machine model for each communication protocol, an inference engine that uses the knowledge base(s), a working memory, a knowledge acquisition subsystem to gather the data required to build the knowledge base(s), a dialog subsystem to conduct an interactive conversation with the user(s), and an explanation subsystem to explain the inferencing mechanism. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)
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