NEST: NEtwork Server Tool

NEST (NEtwork Server Tool) can be used to automatically generate code infrastructure for TCP-based network servers. It uses a specifi cation language to describe client-server interaction and state transitions within the server. This specifi cation language has some similarities to the compiler tools Lex and Yacc, and its design makes network server specifi cation straightforward. One of the main features of NEST is that it can generate three different types of server from the same basic specifi cation: process-based, threaded, and event-driven. Our performance results show that we can produce server code for all three models which is competitive with established, highly-tuned servers.