This paper surveys how formal verification can be used to prove the correctness of ad hoc routing protocols, which are fundamental infrastructure of wireless sensor networks. The existing techniques fall into two classes: verification on small-scale networks and verification on unbounded networks. The former one is always fully automatic and easy to use, thanks to the limited state space generated in verification. However, it cannot prove the correctness over all cases. The latter one can provide a complete proof based on abstractions of unbounded network. However, it usually needs user intervention and expertise in verification. The two kinds of technique are illustrated by verifications against some key properties such as stability, loop-freedom and deadlock-freedom. To conclude, they can be used to find faults and prove correctness, respectively. We believe that they can together aid the development of correct ad hoc routing protocols and their reliable implementations.
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an important inter-domain routing protocol, which is widely used in Internet. It allows independent policies to be designed for each Autonomous System (AS). However, the flexibility in designing independent policies causes the convergence problem, i.e., a BGP network may constantly send routing information between ASes and cannot reach a stable state. In this paper, we propose an approach for model checking the convergence property of BGP networks. We firstly establish a formal model of BGP networks and define its convergence property. Then we use the Promela language to describe this model and analyze its convergence. The model is generic enough, thus different instances of BGP networks can be simulated and verified by only modifying parameters and policies. Finally, as examples, we simulate and verify some typical instances of BGP networks by using the SPIN model checker.
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