UC Santa Cruz

FATE (Functional Algebraic aTomic Evaluators) is introduced as an alternative to the traditional approach of communication protocols in which each protocol implements its own simple data interpretation module to decide the next steps to be taken by protocol agents executing the protocols. FATE uses algebraic expressions to evaluate information in a packet, message or stored piece of content and render a normalized scalar value that states the utility of the information contained in the data according to rules defined by the protocols using the data.This allows the aggregation of simple rules into very sophisticated expressions used to define the utility of the data. The approach advocated in FATE consists of aggregating the results of simple data evaluators (atomic evaluators) to obtain a utility value that reflects how useful the data are to the communication protocol or protocols using the data. This approach allows rapid development and simplifies the evaluation of results.Because FATE uses equations to assign utilities to data, it allows a modular development and duplication of results by using the same formula to evaluate the same type of utility. This consistent behavior reduces protocol development time and effort when protocols have to be tested in simulators before being deployed in actual software and or hardware platforms.Examples based on caching systems and forwarding of data packets are used to illustrate the advantages of using FATE as a plug-in data-evaluation engine of any protocol stack.