title: Environment for quickly developing routing protocol prototype
body: <p>I am doing research on routing protocols.  Currently I perform simulations written in Python of a new protocol.  The next step would be to build a real prototype which can really run on top of a Linux-based operating system (as a routing daemon such as ospfd).</p>
  
  <p>What would be a well-suited programming environment/language to quickly build a prototype of a routing protocol?  Anyone having experience with building distributed protocol prototypes?  </p>
  
  <p>I would like to focus as much as possible on high-level protocol logic instead of on low-level machine-related instructions.  I am willing to learn new languages (such as Erlang or Haskell), in case they are better adapted for such a task.  Alternatively, I have read about the twisted framework available in Python (which would probably allow to re-use some code), but it is unclear to me if this only would help me in case I write client/server-based protocols.  </p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know about an elegant tutorial or example implementation of a (distributed) protocol implementation?</p>