The Design And Implementation Of The Network Switch Testing System

In the information age, the network has become a part of people’s life. Each layerof network equipment has been widely applied, especially the application of theEthernet switch network equipment as the link layer of the TCP/IP model, and themarket demand is huge. It should go through the research and development,pre-production, production, the factory inspection a few must link which constitutes thesupply chain of the product to put a product into the market. The production and testingefficiency direct impacts on the delivery efficiency and marketing. But the productionand test efficiency situation is not optimistic for most manufacturers nowadays, it isurgent to improve the production and detection efficiency.In order to improve the efficiency of production and testing, we need a reliable andpractical test system which mainly consists of three parts: PC, router (controller) andswitcher. And in this paper, the design of switcher is the particularly critical part. Itexchanges data between controller and switcher using the principle of multi-computercommunication, controller send command to switcher, and switcher is responsible forrecognising and responding command, and implementing the corresponding operation.The communication between switcher and controller is achieved by the internalmicrocontroller of switcher. Microcontroller is responsible for processing orders, andmaking operation to control the switch composed by relays, which decides to connect orturn off the ports. It provides Ping package between the ports of switch with channellinks. Through the Ping package, we can check out the on-off and packet loss situationbetween the ports of switcher. Ping package process is to detect the on-off situation inevery two time-sharing Ping package between the ports, and PC will record the detailedtest results in this process.In the dissertation, switcher has16ports and each switcher can be responsible fortesting eight ports of switch. The test system composed by multiple switchers andtooling switch, controller, PC can test switches with any number of ports, and multipletest systems can test multiple switches. This dissertation mainly take charge of solvingthe technical problems in multi-computer communication between switcher and controller, and researching each device coordination function in the hardware design ofswitcher and the information interactive program in the software design of switcher.Whether the negotiation on communication agreement, or the realization of softwareand hardware for multi-computer communication reflect the design ideas ofmulti-computer communication.