Test sequence generation methods for protocol conformance testing

This paper presents a survey of test sequence generation methods for testing the conformance of a protocol implementation to its specification which is modeled as a finite state machine (FSM). The past decade has been a period of intense research in test sequence generation, since it is one of the most important issue in the area of protocol conformance testing. There have been four major methods of conformance test generation reported in the literature: transition tours, distinguishing sequences, characterizing sequences, and unique input/output sequences. These methods are used to test the control portion of a protocol specification. Applications of these methods to the finite state machine model are discussed, and then comparison and analysis are made in terms of two criteria: fault coverage and test sequence length. Also, some issues which are related to test generation for protocol conformance testing are identified.