Design of traffic controller automated testing tool

Traffic engineers and technicians are faced with the challenge of testing traffic controllers to ensure that they comply with different software and hardware requirements prior to deployment. Currently the testing is done manually using traditional “suitcase testers”. These manual tests can be tedious and time-consuming and have many limitations such as the inability to document the test results and the difficulty in replicating field conditions. This paper presents a traffic controller automated testing tool and a new script language (CIDScript) to implement and facilitate automated testing of traffic controller functionality using the controller interface device (CID) technology. The paper also describes three CIDScript test examples to demonstrate: (1) an automated suitcase tester can test conditions that cannot be tested with a standard suitcase tester; (2) an automated suitcase tester can conduct tests faster and more efficiently than a standard tester; (3) the automated suitcase tester can document the results of a number of tests that can be compared and evaluated later, something that the standard suitcase tester cannot do.