Protocol design is miserable, nothing is elegant.I do like working in the area of protocol design+implementation. There are a lot of interesting problems to work on in this space....problems that fully engage your mind if you care about doing it well. But...wow...it can be a frustrating area to work in too. If you are not on top of your game 100% of the time while doing protocol work, then the results always seem to come back to haunt you.
I think I'll make another donation to the OpenSSL folks now....