DYNAMIC LAYERED PROTOCOL STACK

The present invention provides a method and system for dynamically building a protocol stack for use by a communication program to establish a data transfer protocol. The method of creating the protocol stack first establishes a set of protocol layer descriptions. One protocol layer description is used to establish an initial protocol layer that has a protocol interface. For each other protocol layer description, a current protocol layer having an interface is established using the protocol layer description, and the current protocol layer is connected to a previously established protocol layer using one of the interfaces from the previously established protocol layer. In this manner, the protocol layers are connected in pairs. These connected protocol layers make up a protocol stack. Finally, the method provides the interface from a protocol layer, e.g., the top layer, to the communication program. When the communication program prepares data for transmission, the methods of the protocol stack are invoked against the data by invoking the interface provided to the communication program. In this manner, the data is processed by each layer of the protocol stack in turn as the protocol layers pass the data via the interfaces. The protocol stack is readily modifiable by modifying the protocol layer descriptions and rebuilding the protocol stack.