Automation of the test methods for packet loss and packet loss duration in the Ixia platform

Abstract: Today’s technology has a strong tendency towards automation. As a matter of fact, the tremendous improvement of science in the recent years brought new ideas regarding to accelerate the scientific process that is not separated of automation. This paper also deals with automation of manual tests that were used to analyze packet loss and packet loss duration in a network. These two metrics were chosen based on their importance they have in the communication technology, also based on the weak points that were found in the manual processes. This experiment is done in the Ixia platform that was an appropriate test bed to design an automation framework.After a comprehensive research on network and communication we could choose packet loss and packet loss duration as two important parameters that are under test several times per day. Therefore, based on the properties that are used for automation, these two metrics had the priority compare to other metrics. We could create a framework that works correspond to the manual test process. For this purpose, Tcl programming language is used. The script that was written with this high-level language can communicate with the graphical user interface, configuring all the connected devices, measuring mentioned metrics and ultimately save the result in a csv file.Finally, we could reach to the main objective of this project which was to show how positively automatic method can affect on the quality of test in terms of accuracy, time and manpower saving.