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Increasingly numerous and complex communication protocols are being employed in distributed systems and computer networks of all types. This Note describes some of the more formal techniques that are being developed to facilitate design of correct protocols. Our major conclusion is that it is vital to specify the services provided by a protocol layer in addition to specifying the cooperating protocol entities which make up the layer. We develop service specifications of several representative protocols by using formal techniques from software engineering such as abstract machines and buffer histories. A survey of protocol verification methods and a bibliography indexed by key phrases are also provided.