ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of reusability at three levels: reusability for creating new software systems from developed and tested software rather than from scratch, reusability for creating complex models from building blocks already modeled, and reusability for composing common functional elements to create building block models. It focuses on Atelier for Modeling and Simulation, which is the simulation environment developed in the context of the Open Systems Integrated Simulator project. The chapter describes the communication network model unit, called for Detailed Basic Model (DBM). It discusses the protocol entity modeling unit which is the function. A DBM can be used either as a component of a communication network or as a component of a generic model. A DBM is composed of three blocks: the Behavior Engine Block, the Interfaces Block and the Measurements Block. The most important contribution of this research is the definition of a methodology for modeling protocol entities as DBMs.
