Tools for implementing network protocols

This paper describes two software tools—a message manager and a map manager—used to implement network protocols. The tools are provided as part of the x‐kernel, an operating system kernel designed to support the construction and composition of protocols. For each tool, we briefly motivate the network task that needs to be done, give a high‐level specification of the tool, outline the algorithms and data structures used to implement the tool and give concrete examples of how the tool is used to implement real protocols. We also demonstrate how the tools, even though they are designed for general use, perform efficiently.