Module - Types of Testing
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Types of Testing
Types of Testing
The first step in assessing the objective and scope of a test effort is to understand the
reasons for why it was requested, and the motives of the people or organization that
requested it.
In some instances, your client may be able to clearly tell you why they want testing and
what they expect from testing, while others may only be able to tell you that their
proposed deployment "is critical to the business and must be tested."
In cases of the latter, you will need to rely on knowledge of your client, personal
experience, and industry best practices to determine the objective and scope of the test
effort.
Following are some of the most common types of testing.
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Types of Testing
Proof of Concept Testing
Proof of concept (POC) testing is normally conducted during the Plan Phase of a new
network design, or prior to the introduction of a new technology or service into an
operational network.
A network architect will often request that a POC test be completed to ensure that a new
product or technology will work as expected in the context of their design. Successful
POC testing is often the criteria for purchasing or moving into the low-level design (LLD)
phase of a project, and in some cases POC testing is a mandatory milestone to be
completed before purchasing approval will be granted. In general, POC testing should be
conducted systematically but persist only as long as necessary to prove that a proposed
solution will work as expected.
An exception to this general rule is when POC testing is used as a means to differentiate
between similar products as part of a "bake-off" test. These types of tests often require
extensive scale and feature testing in order to provide the necessary data to differentiate
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between competing products.
Types of Testing
Network Readiness Testing
Network readiness testing is often included as part of a network assessment to
determine whether a production network can meet the needs of a new application or
service, and to identify any gaps that may hinder it. This type of testing is commonly
conducted prior to deploying a Unified Communications (UC) solution, to help an
enterprise determine whether its network will be able to meet the stringent requirements
associated with real-time applications.
Network readiness testing for UC often involves test tool injection and measurement of
synthetic application traffic across a live network to predict how the actual application will
perform when network elements are running in steady-state conditions, during day-to-
day operations.
Success criteria for this type of testing is easy to define because the SLA requirements
with respect to delay, jitter, and loss are well understood for UC applications. Careful
planning and coordination is often necessary when this type of network readiness testing
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is conducted so that production service disruption can be avoided.
Types of Testing
Design Verification Testing
As the name suggests, this type of testing occurs during the Design Phase of a
network's lifecycle. Design verification testing is similar to POC testing in that both are
performed in order to gain confidence in a proposed design or solution prior to
deployment.
Design verification testing is typically more extensive than POC testing, however, as it
often represents the last opportunity before implementation to fully examine whether all
aspects of a design will function as expected when subjected to various stress
conditions.
Design verification testing is focused on performance, scalability, failover, operations,
and manageability elements of a design. The output from this type of testing often feeds
into the software recommendations, hardware specifications, and device configuration
templates of an LLD document.
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Types of Testing
Hardware Certification Testing
Hardware certification testing often occurs during the Optimize Phase of a network's
lifecycle as new platforms are introduced into existing operational networks to provide
enhanced capabilities, better performance, or to replace equipment that is reaching end-
of-life (EOL) status from a vendor supportability standpoint.
Engineering and operations groups of an enterprise often require that hardware
certification testing be completed before a product can be deployed in the production
network. While it is generally accepted that equipment vendors will subject new
platforms to a variety of tests during the product development cycle, there is no
substitute for customized, enterprise-specific testing to uncover defects or feature
limitations that would not be found otherwise.
It is nearly impossible for an equipment manufacturer to predict how a customer might
deploy every feature, or the level of stress that a platform might be subjected to in an
operational network with unique requirements.
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Types of Testing
Network Operating System Testing
This type of testing is often required by the operations teams responsible for OS
upgrades and is similar in scope to hardware certification testing. Network OS testing is
often performed during the Optimize Phase of a network's lifecycle, as operating
software reaches its end of life, or when new features or bug fixes are needed.
Overall, there are many different levels of network OS testing that can be undertaken,
some of which are only appropriate during the product development phase by the
equipment vendor test groups. The most common types of tests conducted by clients
are software acceptance tests, which are a customized suite of tests executed to verify
general feature functionality.
Regression tests are a variant of software acceptance tests, in which critical features
that worked in the past are retested to ensure that they are still functioning properly in
the new OS. The scope of network OS testing ranges from small, short-duration tests
(such as bug fix verifications), to longer-duration, multithreaded tests that involve
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multiple features to be verified in parallel.
Types of Testing
Migration Plan Testing
One of the most challenging and critical aspects of a networking project is the migration
of users and services to a new network infrastructure. Even the best network designs
are destined for failure if they cannot be implemented without causing extended service
outages.
Yet despite the risks, many network architects spend a disproportionate amount of time
focused on the "end state" of their network designs, developing migration plans as an
afterthought, if at all.
A good migration plan should address how routing protocols and applications will interact
when the network is partially migrated, providing success indicators and a backout plan
when unexpected behavior is encountered during a migration. Testing of a migration plan
is an essential part of the design process for networking projects of any scale.
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Types of Testing
Network Ready for Use Testing
A network ready for use (NRFU) test typically is executed on a new greenfield network
infrastructure as a last step in certifying that it is ready to carry production traffic. During
an NRFU test, network devices are methodically checked to ensure that they have been
implemented according to the design specifications and are running in an error-free
state.
Some of the tests commonly associated with NRFU testing include the following:
• Device tests (hardware/software inventory, power, syslog error checking)
• Circuit tests (throughput, delay, jitter, errors)
• Routing tests (adjacencies, routing table consistency)
• Traffic tests (end-to-end traffic testing)
• Network service tests (multicast, QoS, WAN acceleration)
• Application tests
• Management/NMS/security tests
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