Introduce a protocol package and migrate all code that builds at protocol commands and interprets at protocol responses and notifications

[akafredperry]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently the code to form at protocol commands, interpret the response and process notifications is distributed throughout the code base. The class names VerbBuilders should be CommandBuilders.
The behaviour of the current code is tested indirectly (primarily as end to end tests with the virtual env).
It difficult to assess the code coverage.

Describe the solution you'd like

Create a new package called protocol, migrate and refactor all existing code and compare against the at protocol specification.
Create unit tests that give 100% coverage

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[akafredperry]

One possibility would be to adopt Netty for all the networking. The natural extension to that would be to model the protocol request/response and notifications as Java classes and use the Netty codec support.

[gkc]

One possibility would be to adopt Netty for all the networking. The natural extension to that would be to model the protocol request/response and notifications as Java classes and use the Netty codec support.

sounds like a good idea