Experience with test generation for real protocols

This paper presents results on the application of four protocol test sequence generation techniques (T-, U-, D-, and W-methods) to the NBS Class 4 transport protocol (TP4). The ability of a test sequence to decide whether a protocol implementation conforms to its specification depend on the range of faults that it can capture. The study shows that a test sequence produced by the T-method has a poor fault detection capability whereas test sequences produced by the U-, D- and W-methods have comparable (superior to that for T-method) fault coverage on several classes of randomly generated machines. The lengths of test sequences produced by the four methods tend to be different. The length of a test sequence produced by the T-method (W-method) is the smallest (largest). The length of a test sequence from the U-method is smaller than that for the D-method and lengths for both are greater than that for the T-method and less than that for the W-method.