[ruby-talk:5362] Re: Unit testing network code?

> I think maybe one would test each end on its own first, faking the
> communication between them, then start up both ends together and cause
> them to interact.  That seems fair enough but when the network is not
> reliable (UDP for example), how does one isolate the different problems
> introduced by a lossy network from each other and from the property being
> tested?

This seems to be heavily architecture-dependent. Maybe there could be an
alternate version of the inet loopback (lo.o ?) module in Linux that could
do that... when the address matches a certain pattern (127.1.*.*) it would
drop packets according to a certain characteristic. Maybe you could
suggest the idea on the Linux kernel mailing-list.

Otherwise, a simple UDP/TCP emulator/filter could be written in Ruby, and
you would add rules of packet-dropping in it. This would be less universal
(Ruby only, and must be used explicitly) but much easier to write.

matju