The telecom sector continues to see exponential growth in terms of the number of connected devices utilizing telecommunication networks. With trends like Internet of Things (IOT) and Bring your own device (BYOD), such growth is expected to continue. Notwithstanding the development of high throughput and high capacity wireless technologies, networks that support connected devices are being utilized to their limits due to the sheer number of connected devices utilizing the networks.
To ensure that these high service demands are met, network operators test their networks for operability and robustness. For example, a network can be “stress tested” for robustness by deliberately increasing network traffic in order to cause a corresponding increase in central processing unit (CPU) and memory usage on the network nodes. In order to successfully pass a stress test, a network node should not fail (e.g., power cycle) under stressed conditions.
Often, however, today's networks are not tested adequately to ensure full robustness. That is, today's networks are still vulnerable to failure in particular scenarios that aren't covered by existing testing methodologies, and a node failure can have a significant impact on a telecommunication network. For example, in certain situations a single node failure can cause upwards of thousands of outages, whereby many customers lose service on their devices. Without adequate testing methodologies, networks remain unstable and vulnerable to failure.