scope:

The present document provides guidelines for test plans that assess different approaches to defining SDN Applications, different ways of arranging and federating SDN Controllers, and arrangements of network switching/forwarding functions (both physical and virtual) to create the various path-implementations between and among NS Endpoints and VNFs. These guidelines support development of detailed test plans, and ultimately influence the NFV framework (when testers share their results from testing arrangements encouraged by these guidelines). The test plan guidelines should be sufficiently abstract to include all envisioned possibilities, and will also pursue the details of technologies of interest. Although the primary emphasis of testing is the performance and benchmarking of systems composed of the components above, the attempts to combine different protocols and functions will undoubtedly uncover combinations which are non-interoperable, and these should be noted.