Research On PDU En/Decoding Techniques And Development Of En/Decoders In IP Routers Test System

The technique background of this dissertation is router testing, which has drawn worldwide attention since IPv6 came into view. To enable a smooth transition from IPv4 to IPv6, routers supporting IPv4 only, IPv6, and IPv6 encapsulated in IPv4 will co-exist for some time, and this complicates router testing. Moreover, existing testing methods such as Loop-back Test Method (LTM) and Transverse Test Method (TTM) are not catered for testing modern routers with multi-ports. All these considerations have stimulated the research activity on multi-port testing at Sichuan Network Communication Key Laboratory (SC-Netcom Lab).With the new MDSP-TTM (Multi-port Distributed Synchronized Parallel Transverse Test Method) introduced at SC-Netcom Lab, a Multi-Port Router -Distributed Concurrent Test System (MPR-DCTS) is under development. An MPR-DCTS takes two-layer architecture: at the top layer, a PC acts as the Multi-Port Test Manager (MPTM) and at the bottom layer, multiple TPTs (Two-Port Testers) to test a pair of ports with either LTM or TTM.This dissertation focuses on an important component in TPT, i.e. Encoder/Decoder (E/D), which acts as the peer entity (in a test system) of the protocol implementation in a router under test. An E/D is not only capable of encoding PDUs conforming to relevant protocol specifications, but also capable of encoding PDUs with errors inside to check the reaction of the router under test to an erroneous PDU. The author's contribution in this dissertation can be summarized as:A. framework of design of E/Ds for TPT is provided, which will be jointly compiled with the "C" code of abstract test suites to produce executable test suites for TPT.B. An adaptation module is introduced between an E/D and supporting layers to cope with the diversity of underlying protocols and makes the E/D for a given protocol independent of lower layers.