A deadlock in a packet switching network is a state in which one or more messages have not yet reached their target, yet cannot progress any further. We formalize three different notions of deadlock in the context of packet switching networks, to which we refer as global, local and weak deadlock. We establish the precise relations between these notions, and prove they characterize different sets of deadlocks. Moreover, we implement checking of deadlock freedom of packet switching networks using the symbolic model checker nuXmv. We show experimentally that the implementation is effective at finding subtle deadlock situations in packet switching networks.

This is joint work with Jeroen J.A. Keiren and Hans Zantema