SIP performance testing overview

With Rational Performance Tester Extension for SIP, you can perform functional and stress testing on SIP applications and test SIP infrastructure.

SIP refers to the Session Initiation Protocol (Internet Engineering Task Force RFC 3261), an application-layer protocol that applications use to manage sessions between multiple clients.

Rational Performance Tester Extension for SIP can act as an SIP user agent and can also substitute for any element that receives and sends SIP messages.

For example, Rational Performance Tester can act as a Serving-Call Session Control Function (S-CSCF) in a test case to stress an application server or act as a user agent to stress proxies.

Testing has five stages: test creation, test editing, workload emulation with schedules, schedule execution, and evaluation of results.

• Test creation and editing. SIP test creation differs from the creation of other tests, where client actions are recorded and automatically transformed into a test. Instead, you write SIP tests with the test editor, designing all aspects of the test. SIP test editing involves the same process as SIP test creation. SIP test creation, editing, and related tasks are explained in Create SIP tests and SIP test editor overview.

• Workload emulation with schedules. After creating a test, you create a schedule. You add user groups to the schedule and add appropriate tests to each group to emulate a task. A typical schedule contains these elements:

  • User groups and tests. A schedule requires at least these items to run.

  • User groups running from a remote location. This separates workbench activity and load-adding activity. For more information, see Run a user group at a remote location.

  • Schedule items, such as loops, delays, and think time settings, to further emulate a load.

• Schedule execution.

  To run a schedule that includes SIP tests, you perform the same actions as for other tests. For details about schedule execution tasks, see Run a schedule or test.

• Evaluation of results. A successful schedule run generates a variety of reports. You can regenerate reports after the run, customize reports, and export reports in HTML format. For details about evaluating test results, see Evaluate results. For information about SIP reports, see SIP Performance report.