IoT has shown tremendous change in the world by enabling the connection of devices, sensors, and appliances with the huge exchange of data. Keep exploring more on performance testing with our new expert series.
The needs of society we live in are changing with emerging decision making solutions based on real time information from IoT devices and applications. The market requirement of IoT is more likely to increase in near future. According to CISCO's predictions below, 50 billion things will be connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) by 2020.
Like any other software application, the IoT ecosystem also needs to undergo performance testing in order to identify the bottlenecks which could lower its overall performance.
Performance testing plays a major role in ensuring that the interconnected devices in an IoT ecosystem work well for all kinds of networks and loads.
The most common types of performance tests for IoT applications are:
Communication protocols used in IoT ecosystem
Knowledge about functioning of Embedded Systems/Hardware/Sensors
Network monitoring and sniffing tools to intercept communication between devices
Basic understanding of network communication technologies like Cellular, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.
Exposure of load testing tools supporting IoT protocols
| Comparison Parameters | Web and Mobile | IoT |
|---|---|---|
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Protocol Support
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Commonly used protocols are HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, POP, SMTP, JDBC, etc.
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Commonly used protocols are UDP (User Datagram Protocol), MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport), CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol), AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol), etc.
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Simulation
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Requires simulation of users
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Requires simulation of devices and sensors using IoT simulation tools like MATLAB, IoTIFY, IBM Bluemix (now IBM Cloud), etc.
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Communication Channel
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Testing is mostly performed on application layer
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Testing is mainly performed at physical, transport, and network layer
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Test Infrastructure
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Test infrastructure involves server, routers, switches, load balancers, and firewalls
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Require IoT devices such as light sensors, accelerometers, and GPS locators which are using different network conditions
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The existing load testing tools have already evolved to a great extent to support TCP/IP protocol based applications. But when it comes to the performance testing of IoT system that involves combination of IoT protocols such as MQTT and CoAP, it ventures as a challenge for performance testers. This is mainly because only selected tools provide support for these protocols.
This challenge can possibly be resolved when IoT systems become compatible with existing standard protocols such as HTTP(S), WebSockets, FTP, SMTP, etc. This is evolving as a new approach, the Web of Things.
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