From Active to Passive—Progress in Testing Internet Routing Protocols

Routing protocols play an important role in theInternet and the test requirements are running up. To test routingprotocols more efficiently, several enhancing techniques are applied inthe protocol integrated test system described in this paper. TheImplementation Under Test ismodeled as a black box with windows. The test system is endowed withmultiple channels and multiple ports to test distributed protocols. Thetest suite and other related aspects are also extended. Meanwhile, thepassive testing is introduced to test, analyze and manage routingprotocols in the production field, which is able to perform theconformance test, the interoperability test and the performance test.The state machine of peer sessions is tested with the statesynchronization algorithm, and the routing information manipulation andother operations are checked and analyzed with the methods like thetopology analysis and the internal process simulation. With both theactive testing and the passive testing, the routing protocol test is goingfurther and more thoroughly and helps a lot in the development ofrouters.