The growing discipline of eXtreme Programming[#!XP!#] has a number of fundamental principles
[#!XP!#] goes on to explain that the fundamental activities are coding, testing, listening and designing. XP tries to reach the point where one writes the test cases before the code. To do this, the cost (in effort and time) of testing must be reduced such that all tests can be run frequently - several times a day if possible. This very rapid feedback reduces the risk of introducing problems - permitting developers to program more efficiently and with more confidence
This paper describes the typical requirements for doing network testing. The reasons why it is expensive and why it is difficult to automate are explained. Our solution, uses User-Mode-Linux to turn machines into processes. The scaffolding is then used to control these processes, to put them through their paces on a regular basis.
No solution is perfect on the first pass - XP actually encourages partial solutions to be implemented and feedback to be received - so we describe our second pass, which at the time of writing, is still in the design phase.