Birgit Geppert, Frank Roessler

• Today's communication systems are typically structured into several layers, where each layer realizes a fixed set of protocol functionalities. These functionalities have been carefully chosen such that a wide range of applications can be supported and protocols work in a general environment of networks. However, due to evolving network technologies as well as increased and varying demands of modern applications general-purpose protocol stacks are not always adequate. To improve this situation new flexible communication architectures have been developed which enable the configuration of customized communication subsystems by composing a proper set of reusable building blocks. In particular, several approaches to automatic configuration of communication subsystems have been reported in the literature. This report gives an overview of theses approaches (F-CCS, Da CaPo, x-Kernel, and ADAPTIVE) and, in particular, defines a framework, which identifies common architectural issues and configuration tasks.