Stress Testing of Distributed Multimedia Software Systems

Abstract

With the advance in network technologies, the use of distributed multimedia data has become very popular. Distributed multimedia systems are complex and error prone. While there are well established testing techniques for the functionalities of such systems, the technique of stress testing to improve test efficiency has not received much attention. It has been argued that faults are more likely to occur in situations where there is a fierce competition for resources. When the system is heavily loaded, errors like mismanagement of buffers can be easily identified. In this paper, we present several criteria for selecting test cases, and describe two methods for generating test cases which maximize system resource usage. Our approach is based on symbolic execution and constraint solving. An example is given to illustrate the concepts and techniques.