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Telco Networks are the home of the concept of interoperability testing. As far as TCP/IP is concerned, the history of multi-vendor interoperability testing events dates to August of 1986, when Dan Lynch organized the first “TCP/IP Implementor's Workshop” that eventually grew into the aptly named "Interop" trade show, which is still going on today.
There are two important classes of interoperability: Multi-vendor and backward-compatibility. Both can leverage identical test apparatus, where the key question being answered is “Does my product work with another product?" – either a product from another vendor, or an older version of my product, respectively.
The Mu Test Suite performs interoperability testing by modeling a service based on actual multi-protocol traffic flows among the devices that make up the service, and the Mu Test Suite can emulate any of the devices within the service, using the captured traffic to guide the Mu Test Suite’s dynamic interactions with the other components of the service. From the perspective of the traffic being injected into the IP Service, the operation of the Mu Test Suite is indistinguishable from the original device because the traffic is essentially identical; it follows the same "script" and delivers equivalent sessions and content over new, live sessions. This is not packet replay: The Mu Test Suite is creating new sessions that are indistinguishable from the traffic that the original device would have sent.
By capturing traffic from older versions of the product, or from competing vendors’ products, the Mu Test Suite replicates the network interactions that demonstrate the desired level of interoperability, without needing to keep all possible equipment in the lab.
Download these free whitepapers: Using Studio Fx for Functional testing and Using Studio Fx for Interoperability testing.
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