Adaptive Technique For Test Packet Generation

Abstract

Recently networks are growing wide and more complex. However administrators use tools like ping and trace route to debug problems. Hence we proposed an automatic and Methodical approach for testing and debugging networks called Automatic Test Packet Generation (ATPG). This approach gets router configurations and generates a device-independent model. ATPG generate a few set of test packets to find every link in the network. Test packets are forwarded frequently and it detect failures to localize the fault. ATPG can detect both functional and performance (throughput, latency) problems. We found, less number of test packets is enough to test all rules in networks. For example, 4000 packets can cover all rules in Stanford backbone network, while 53 are much enough to cover all links.