Abstract
With the growing importance of World Wide Web, the need of web service is growing fast. Many Internet content provider faces huge demand of users. A single Web server cannot provide such a huge response. So a Layer-4 web server cluster is currently the main web server system. However, L4 switches are optimized for the transport layer, they are completely unaware of the Application Layer, which in the Internet, is HTTP (L5 or L5-L7). That means Layer-4 Load Balancing cannot support E-commerce, which is the popular demand in the Internet. Therefore, the Layer-7 Web server cluster is provided to satisfy the complex demand in the Internet. This thesis presents a testing system for Layer-7 network devices. Since the main product of Layer-7 network devices is Web Switch, this thesis aims the target of testing Web Switch technology. This system defines a XML language to depict user’s behavior. Major behavior of people in the Internet is browsing and E-commerce. In other words, browsing means getting static pages, and E-commerce means getting dynamic pages. Current testing tools for the Web Switch mainly measures the performance by getting static pages with URL load balancing; the unit is request/second. This thesis presents a testing platform to measure another testing item to measure the Web Switch; that is persistence. Because persistence offered by the Web Switch can completely support e-commerce without transaction error. This system can measure the performance and correctness of E-commerce supported by the Web Switch. With XML configuration, this system also provides extensibility. Extensibility provides testing of other Layer-7 network devices in the future.