Developing Solutions® has simplified testing of the Diameter core signaling network. You have the flexibility to create complex scenarios that span multiple application interfaces without requiring complicated protocol scripts. You can verify the capabilities of your interfaces and network nodes quickly without having advanced protocol knowledge. With our many-to-one client/server capability, you can surround your server network elements with client interface simulators or use our server node emulators to provide network services for your client network elements. You can test failover of your primary Diameter router to a secondary Diameter router to insure uninterrupted Diameter message flow between network elements.
Link Establishment and Maintenance
dsTest® supports link establishment and maintenance requirements per RFCs 6733 and 3588. Support of the requirements is automatic – no programming or scripting is required. These procedures are simplified and configurable. Features such as Capabilities Exchange and Device Watchdog are supported, and you can modify parameters such as the Capabilities Exchange Response (CER) wait time, maximum link idle time, no-answer failure timeout, and Device Watchdog Request (DWR) interval.
Redundancy
dsTest supports full redundancy of links as specified in RFCs 6733 and 3588. Our Diameter redundancy support and enhancements will cause a client to resend a request via the secondary/alternate interface in the case where the answer is an error with the result code of ’Unable To Deliver’, or ‘Redirected’ and the peer of the other interface is among those in the redirect messages.
You can configure redundancy features such as:
- Duplication message detection;
- Retransmission of lost message;
- Queue depths to manage resources.
Read more about our Testing Diameter Routing capabilities.
SCTP/TCP
dsTest supports both SCTP and TCP transport for Diameter messages, using the standard Linux stacks. SCTP Multihoming is supported.
You can configure parameters such as SCTP Heartbeat interval, SCTP SACK timeout, and Reconnect Interval.
Validation
With our complete Diameter Dictionary, you can define a set of message templates against which all Diameter messages
can be validated, even under load conditions.
A dictionary may be defined as a base level which can be applied to all applications with dictionary validation enabled, or at the application level which would only be applied to a specific application. Application level dictionaries are translucent, in that if a message or AVP is not found, the base dictionary is also searched.
Read more about our Complete Diameter Dictionary.
Customize Messages
The SmartAVP™ feature can be used to insert, delete, or replace AVPs in messages. SmartAVP enables the definition of optional, proprietary or vendor specific signaling or introduction of corrupt or invalid AVPs to facilitate negative testing. When used in conjunction with SmartEvents, SmartAVPs allows precise control of AVPs within any Diameter message exchange.
Alter Application Behavior
The SmartEvents™ feature gives the ability to extend the state machine of an interface application and to define the behavior of individual subscribers or groups of subscribers.
You can:
- Modify the behavior of an application;
- Trigger client-initiated, server-initiated, or network-initiated procedures based on time or on the result of another procedure;
- Coordinate the actions of multiple interface applications to simulate subscriber activity.
Read more about our SmartEvents feature.
Operational Measurements
dsTest provides an extensive set of Diameter operational measurements (OM). These OMs provide detailed information on a per-message type basis.
Examples of Diameter OMs include:
- Connect Open Attempts, Successes, Failures;
- Message sent and received on a per Diameter type;
- Retransmissions;
- Retries exceeded;
- Unsupported messages received;
- Malformed messages received;
- Reject messages sent;
- Error messages received;
- Messages correctly validated against the dictionary;
- Messages that did not validate against the dictionary;
- Message counts per message type including average answer response time.
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