Product category: Embedded Software and Operating Systems
News Release from: LynuxWorks | Subject: Lynx Certifiable Stack
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 5 May 2003

TCP/IP stack stands
alone in certification

The Lynx Certifiable Stack (LCS) is the industry's first DO-178B Level A certified stand-alone TCP/IP stack for safety- and security-critical environments

LCS allows any developer of safety-critical devices the ability to leverage a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) stack that is certifiable to Level A. Historically, developers wanting to leverage a COTS Internet device or software would need to spend countless man-years to achieve Level A certification for the TCP/IP stack, which forms the communications foundation for the device.

The LCS provides the first stand-alone DO-178B Level A stack that allows safety and security critical systems developers to leverage a COTS solution to achieve a low-cost, low-risk path to certification and quick time to market.

"LynuxWorks is pleased to offer the industry's first and only standalone DO-178B Level A certifiable TCP/IP stack for safety and security critical environments", said Dr Inder Singh, CEO of LynuxWorks.

"The fully deterministic nature of this stack makes it revolutionary to developers of any safety- and security-critical device that requires TCP/IP networking connectivity with verifiable design assurance yielding absolute product integrity.

There is no other COTS self-contained TCP/IP stack on the market today that is certifiable to Level A and yields fully deterministic operation".

The LCS is designed for deterministically safe operation and runs on a standalone processor that isolates the sporadic nature of TCP/IP processing from impacting other safety critical processing on the host system.

The LCS provides reliable delivery for all data packets, a feature previously unheard of with the typically "best effort" style delivery of TCP/IP.

The quality of service capabilities of the LCS are standards-based and enable effective flow control of data and deterministic operation.

Rate limits are set on a per-socket basis and enforced by the stack transparently to the communicating applications.

In addition, all resources necessary for stack operation are pre-allocated for guaranteed availability and completely configurable.

The standalone capability and the modularity of the LCS design allows it to be leveraged anywhere TCP/IP connectivity is needed in a safety or security critical application.

All modules are written to DO-178B Level A constraints and the package has been designed, coded, tested and verified to this highest level of avionics software assurance.

In addition, the DO-178B standard also requires that all code is written to satisfy the documented requirements of the system and that no extra code is allowed in the software.

This ensures that extra code cannot be used as a covert channel degrading the security of the system.

For systems where a total system solution is needed, the LCS also includes an applications interface layer, which fully integrates it with LynuxWorks LynxOS-178B, the only DO-178B Level A certifiable, Unix/Posix-compatible RTOS.

The LCS brings standards-based communication and connectivity to the world of TCP/IP software and devices.

If standards-based network management support is also necessary, stack operation monitoring is available via the internal SNMP agent and includes management information bases (MIBs) which define the standards-based parameters of interest with networking statistics.

Additionally, LCS supports the TCP, UDP, IP, ICMP protocols and many other networking capabilities like multicast and broadcast packets, making it ideal for any safety and security critical networked application.

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