Introduction

Protocol standards engineering presents a set of practices that facilitate timely development of high quality protocol standards. The key aspects of quality in this context are:

Unambiguous protocol specification so that products built by different manufacturers can interoperate

Specification of minimum requirements to achieve interoperability, at the same time leaving room for product differentiation

The approach is based on conventions well established in general protocol engineering, supplemented with guidelines specific to the standardization environment.

In the past, protocol specifications were defined in the context of large standardization projects such that took a long time to complete. ISDN is a good example of this type of project. Today, market pressures are forcing a shortening of development cycles which requires approaches that are fast and pragmatic. Still, some useful elements of past practices can be retained in a modified form even today.