One of my favorite test related weblogs, The Braidy Tester, has an awesome list of “did I remember to” test items.

I’ll add the following items to ‚ÄúNetworking‚Äù, based on some of my past experience that I’ve added to my Test Design Specifications for parts of Indigo that I’m working on:

• Verify correct handling of software when network card is disabled or removed.
  • Does it fail gracefully?
  • Does setup need to install the loopback adapter? Does it work with the loopback adapter?
  • Does it return proper error messages?
• Verify correct handling of software under a variety of network conditions and bandwidths.
  • Variety of bandwidths: 56k modem, 1mb, 10mb, 100mb, 1000mb
  • Variety of networking technologies: GRPS, Cable Modem (different upload/download bandwidths), 802.11b, 802.11g, DSL, etc
  • Variety of network addressing: NAT, Under XPSP2 Firewall, DHCP, Static IP
  • Test under Domain and Workgroup
  • Simulate high packet loss and unreliable connections (how does your application respond to frequent disconnects, dropped packets, etc).