Modeling and Testing of Network Protocols with Parallel State Machines

Abstract

SUMMARYThe researches on model-based testing mainly focus on the models with single component, such as FSM and EFSM. For the network protocols which have multiple components communicating with messages, CFSM is a widely accepted solution. But in some network protocols, parallel and data-shared components maybe exist in the same network entity. It is infeasible to precisely specify such protocol by existing models. In this paper we present a new model, Parallel Parameterized Extended Finite State Machine (PaP-EFSM). A protocol system can be modeled with a group of PaP-EFSMs. The PaP-EFSMs work in parallel and they can read external variables form each other. We present a 2-stage test generation approach for our new models. Firstly, we generate test sequences for internal variables of each machine. They may be non-executable due to external variables. Secondly, we process the external variables. We make the sequences for internal variables executable and generate more test sequences for external variables. For validation, we apply this method to the conformance testing of real-life protocols. The devices from different vendors are tested and implementation faults are exposed.

Verification and testing of safety-critical airborne systems: A model-based methodology

“…Model-based verification and model-based testing are still very active research domains [5,6,14,16,23,24,25]. They are considered as two distinct research areas and supported by different research communities.…”

“…They are considered as two distinct research areas and supported by different research communities. EFSM-based testing and Communicating EFSM have been extensively studied [18,19,20,21,23,25]. A more recent research area is test generation based on model checking, with several publications [17,22,26,27,28,29] discussing that topic.…”