TESLA as a tool of developing bridge protocols

In a distributed computing environment, a testbed is built to investigate topology learning behaviors of bridges for LAN interconnection. It is flexible to configure on any networked computing facility and thus serves as an environment for rapid prototyping of bridge systems. Unlike a pure simulator, the testbed employs distributed computing in itself so that the parallelism embedded in protocols under test can be exploited as well. With modular design and unified interprocess interfacing, it can be employed to explore a variety of topology algorithms. In addition, as part of testbed functions, it can simulate network topology of interest. It also provides the challenges of distributed environments, performance reports, dynamical topology change scenarios, and a graphical user interface. By direction linking the actual code of the protocols to the testbed, the phases of design, development, and testing of new systems are fully integrated