Research And Validation Of An Improved Test Sequence Generation Algorithm For Protocol Conformance Testing

Protocols are the rules that devices shall comply with when communicating, the protocol implementation in devices are developed by the protocol developer according to the standard protocol specification text. Different people or vendor may implement it in different way. Protocol conformance testing is used to ensure there is no deviation between the protocol specification and implementation, futher more, to ensure the normal communication between the devices. How to generate test sequences to meet the requirements is a crucial part in protocol conformance testing. This paper embarks from the formalized method, after analyzing the existing test sequence generation algorithm, we introduce their solutions in detail. After that, we propose an improved method which is based on UIO sequence (Unique Input/Output), this method has a better error detection performance and can be adjusted flexibly according to the different testing requirements, and the length of the test sequence result is shorter than others. Moreover, this paper implement the algorithm and complete a tool for generating test sequence automatically, this tool will simplify the manual steps in protocol conformance testing and improve the test efficiency.Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLN) is different from the traditional IP network, the nodes in it are tend to have limited computing and processing ability, power and energy supply, the existing protocols can not satisfy the routing requirements in this condition. So the ROLL working group of IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) launched a new routing protocol, that is, IPv6Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL). This paper studies the RPL protocol and proposes a mathematical model of it which is based on finite state machine (FSM). Then we solve this model by using the proposed algorithm and get the test sequence of RPL. On this basis, we implement a protocol conformance testing system and apply it to a RPL device.This paper contributes a new method for the test sequence generation in protocol conformance testing. The test sequence generation tool and the protocol conformance testing system we implement in this paper reduce the human labor and make the testing more automatic, in addition, the abstract modeling and the study on the RPL protocol conformance testing provide the guarantee for the follow-up quality testing of the protocol devices.