Expert System Based Network Testing
Networks protocols are implemented in combinations of software, firmware, and hardware on each end of a connection. Introduction of multiservice networks demands more intelligent control over network usage and more efficient application development practices that enable achieving Quality–of-Service (QoS) goals. As applications over the network increase, so does the need to diagnose performance at the application level, knowing how traffic patterns are affected in terms of guaranteed bandwidth, delay and reliability. In this chapter, the concept for testing multiservice networks in real-life situations during stationary time intervals, by using expert-system-based protocol analysis, is described. The architecture of hardware and software needed for data acquisition and testing, that, as a working example, was conducted on a major network with live traffic, is proposed, as well as the appropriate algorithm for estimating standard QoS parameters from the measured data that mainly included decoding with precise time-stamps and expert-system comments, resulting from the appropriate processing of the network data.