A Formal Passive Performance Testing Approach for Distributed Communication Systems

Conformance testing of communicating protocols is a functional test which verifies whether the behaviors of the protocol satisfy defined requirements, while the performance testing of communicating protocols is a qualitative and quantitative test, aiming at checking whether the performance requirements of the protocol have been satisfied under certain conditions. It raises the interesting issue of converging these two kinds of tests by using the same formal approach. In this paper, we present a novel logic-based approach to test the protocol performance through real execution traces and formally specified properties. In order to evaluate and assess our methodology, we have developed a prototype and present experiments with a set of IMS/SIP properties. Finally, the relevant verdicts and discussions are provided.