2 research outputs found
The STRESS Method for Boundary-point Performance Analysis of End-to-end Multicast Timer-Suppression Mechanisms
Evaluation of Internet protocols usually uses random scenarios or scenarios
based on designers' intuition. Such approach may be useful for average-case
analysis but does not cover boundary-point (worst or best-case) scenarios. To
synthesize boundary-point scenarios a more systematic approach is needed.In
this paper, we present a method for automatic synthesis of worst and best case
scenarios for protocol boundary-point evaluation.
Our method uses a fault-oriented test generation (FOTG) algorithm for
searching the protocol and system state space to synthesize these scenarios.
The algorithm is based on a global finite state machine (FSM) model. We extend
the algorithm with timing semantics to handle end-to-end delays and address
performance criteria. We introduce the notion of a virtual LAN to represent
delays of the underlying multicast distribution tree. The algorithms used in
our method utilize implicit backward search using branch and bound techniques
and start from given target events. This aims to reduce the search complexity
drastically. As a case study, we use our method to evaluate variants of the
timer suppression mechanism, used in various multicast protocols, with respect
to two performance criteria: overhead of response messages and response time.
Simulation results for reliable multicast protocols show that our method
provides a scalable way for synthesizing worst-case scenarios automatically.
Results obtained using stress scenarios differ dramatically from those obtained
through average-case analyses. We hope for our method to serve as a model for
applying systematic scenario generation to other multicast protocols.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN) [To
appear
Fault-oriented Test Generation for Multicast Routing Protocol Design
We present a new algorithm for automatic test generation for multicast routing. Our algorithm processes a finite state machine (FSM) model of the protocol and uses a mix of forward and backward search techniques to generate the tests. The output tests include a set of topologies, protocol events and network failures, that lead to violation of protocol correctness and behavioral requirements. We target protocol robustness in specific, and do not attempt to verify other properties in this paper. We apply our method to a multicast routing protocol; PIM-DM, and investigate its behavior in the presence of selective packet loss on LANs and router crashes. Our study unveils several robustness violations in PIM-DM, for which we suggest fixes with the aid of the presented algorithm