A Test Case Design Method For IPv6 Protocol Conformance Testing

As the core protocol of next generation Internet, IPv6 is going into the stage of being applied practically step by step. In this process, whether different versions of IPv6 protocol implementations offered by each manufacturer conform to IPv6 protocol standards and whether they can communicate with each other safely and reliably is crucial for the popularization and development of IPv6.The objective of protocol conformance testing is to test the conformance between a protocol standard and its variable implementations so that these different implementations can interoperate with each other. Therefore, to develop research on IPv6 protocol conformance testing technology is significant for the development of IPv6.Research on test case design methods is important to protocol conformance testing. It decides the quality of the test and is the basis of test operation and test execution, thus it is the core of protocol conformance testing.Based on thorough investigation of the Abstract Test Case Generation part in the protocol conformance testing theory and existing test generation methods, focused on IPv6 protocol conformance testing, this dissertation analyzes the shortcoming of the use of normal test case design method, which is based on standard test case structure defined in ISO9646, in IPv6 protocol conformance test case generation. Through in-depth analysis of the characteristic of IPv6 protocol and practice of IPv6 protocol test, this dissertation proposed a test case design method for IPv6 protocol conformance testing in a creative way and, as a result, presented a new test case structure. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the realization of an industrial IPv6 protocol conformance testing system. To evaluate the quality of test cases by measurement, this dissertation proposed indication parameters for test case evaluation. The analysis of test cases generated in practice shows that the method proposed here is useful for simplifying test sequence, reducing test execution time and improving test efficiency.