A Brief Overview of Existing Tools for Testing the Internet-of-Things

Systems are error-prone. Big systems have lots of errors. The Internet-of-Things poses us one of the biggest and widespread systems, where errors directly impact people's lives. Testing and validating is how one deals with errors; but testing and validating a planetary-scale, heterogeneous, and evergrowing ecosystem has its own challenges and idiosyncrasies. As of today, the solutions available for testing these systems are insufficient and fragmentary. In this paper we provide an overview on test approaches, tools and methodologies for the Internet-of-Things, its software and its devices. Our conclusion is that we are still lagging behind on the best practices and lessons learned from the Software Engineering community in the past decades.

I. Introduction

Internet-of-Things (IoT) is an initiative that shifts the Internet towards a more connected world, connecting every thing to it. IoT is a paradigm where objects become part of the Internet itself, having each object uniquely identifiable, accessible (network-connectivity) and its position and status known, within a merge of services and intelligence, resulting in a fusion between the physical and digital world, with a consequent significant impact on professional, personal and social environments [1].