Implementation and enhancement of a dynamic conformance test method

Abstract

Protocol conformance test is used to promote the interoperability of protocol implementations developed by venders. Non-interoperability between protocol implementations may be caused by ambiguity and/or misinterpretation of protocol specifications by vendors. The conventional method used for protocol conformance test has been standardized by ISO/IEC JTC1 with the purpose of determines whether a protocol implementation conforms to its specification. However, the conventional method sometimes gives wrong test results because the test is based on static test sequences. This problem is caused by some failed transitions of a protocol’s Finite State Machine included in a test sequence, which have an effect on the test result of transitions to be tested. In this thesis, an approach called Dynamic Conformance Test Method (DCTM) is implemented to solve this problem. DCTM dynamically selects different test sequences during testing depending on whether alternative paths without failed transitions exist. As a result, the fault coverage of DCTM is better than that of the conventional test method. DCTM is applied to the TCP protocol in order to demonstrate its improvement in the fault coverage compared to that of the conventional method. And then limitations existing in DCTM are discussed and enhanced DCTM is proposed.