We are living in the 21st century, where almost many intelligent things are run by the internet, and the things that are connected to the internet are called the Internet of Things. Today, real estate agents are focusing on selling smart homes because those homes are easy to connect with through the internet. Similarly, health enthusiasts are also using an IoT to monitor their health-based devices and connect those devices via their smartphones.
In addition, the demand for having smart devices is growing. Therefore, in order to help them accurate devices in terms of functionality, it becomes essential to consider IoT testing because it helps test the device and ensures the accuracy of IoT devices. To help you know this, we are going to explain one example that can make up your mind and encourage you to choose one of the best IoT testing services.
Suppose you are using a Fitbit band and that is connected to your smartphone. Now think about that why you are using this band. You may use Fitbit because it helps you record all your health-related data and perform synchronization with your smartphone apps. But what will happen if this Fitbit starts to provide false data. At this point, whether you will use the Fitbit or move to another device. This is not only the case for a Fitbit but applicable for all IoT devices. Of course, you will switch to other IoT devices, especially to those which have the ability to offer you exact information and are ideal to meet your needs. Similarly, whether you are dealing with supply chain, logistics, school management, hospital management, or OEMs, you will have to acquire IoT Testing because these industries need accurate data. Otherwise, your audience will not be able to get the best product/software experience, or you can experience a severe loss in your business.
Make sure quality plays a critical role in every business and helps IoT succeed in the market. Accordingly, with testing IoT products one can effortlessly address security and data management issues and help IoT products remain trustworthy.
Evolution of QA in a Connected World
QA Testing is essential for IoT because it helps us become confident about the product, ensures that it meets the specific criteria, and allows users to fulfill their expectations. Since providing the quality for every product is the responsibility of QA, so as a Quality Engineer, you should perform extensive and rigorous testing to identify small and hidden bugs in your IoT application.
By doing this, you can confirm that your product will perform better in the market and help you stay ahead in the competition. Now, if you are going to test your IoT application from any software testing company, you should indeed conduct complete testing to detect any errors and to improve the overall quality of the product. Also, you must confirm that the whole network of your IoT device will perform well with other devices, and the device will be delivered as intended.
Are you ready to improve the quality of your IoT Device?
All you need to do is check out some Best IoT Testing Approaches that we have specially curated to maximize the value of your IoT applications with testing.
Must-Know Types of IoT Testing Approaches
1. Performance Testing: Hardware-Software
In performance testing, the hardware-software components of the IoT device are validated by implementing several test cases. The main motive of performance testing is to recognize the way the device interacts with the software. For ensuring real-time credibility and effectiveness, a tester must validate the compatibility of the software with the sensors of the devices. Without this, you cannot guarantee whether your software is fetching accurate information from the sensors or not.
2. Multiple Domain Inspired Compatibility Testing
It is very crucial to know how your IoT device interacts with each other and with the digital network (aka multiple platforms spread throughout multiple domains). With compatibility testing, you will get an estimate of how the interaction mentioned above goes. This testing approach is simple. A tester carries out multiple validation considerations, which include encryptions check-ups, compatibility with the hardware, and other security standards.
3. UX Testing
As the name suggests, this approach includes how the application system is functioning. With the help of multiple user test cases, you can validate the back-end and front-end functionalities, which also include user experience.
4. Security Testing
Security testing is very crucial when it comes to IoT testing. This includes analysis and testing of system fidelity, privacy, and information security. After the security testing, you will be ensured of the consistent performance of your IoT device in the real-time ecosystem. It also helps you in identifying possible security vulnerabilities that a hacker can leverage to hack into your system.
Challenges You Might Face While Testing IoT Devices
Here we will discuss potential challenges that you can face while performing testing of your IoT devices. Let’s get started,
1. There Is a Complicated Mesh of Hardware-Software Network
When you observe the architecture of the IoT devices, you will find that it is coupled among numerous hardware and software components. This tells us that when you perform functionality testing, you might face a tedious testing process that has the potential to annoy you and hamper the timeline of the deliverables.
2. The Availability of Network
The network connection plays a vital role in an IoT ecosystem as getting consistency for data communication at high speed is crucial. You need to test your IoT devices in every possible type of network connectivity and speed and ensure that it is tested based on real-time devices.
3. Module for Device Communication
As mentioned above, the entire IoT device ecosystem involves too many combinations of hardware and software sets. This makes it crucial for them to interact with each other effectively on a real-time basis. Besides, this makes the testing process challenging as there are so many factors to consider, such as upgrade issues, backward compatibility, and security.
If you are ready to give a quick read to What IoT Testing is & What Challenges Occur while working with IoT, you can go here. However, if you want to obtain an in-depth guide of IoT Testing and know its importance across spectrum industries, you need to stay on this page and scroll down to find this information.
What Is IoT Testing?
In simple words, the testing of the IoT device is referred to as IoT Testing. Its objective is to check whether the device is functioning correctly or not. It is the same as testing web apps and other legacy software.
IoT has three core components or elements in a real-world application, i.e., Things, Computing, and Communication. During testing, to analyze these elements, one should prepare a script, and you need to double-check all of the functionalities as it will help you achieve reliability for the app and make it possible to interact across the entire network.
Tools for IoT software testing
Here are suggested IoT (Internet of Things) tools that you can use to test the software of your IoT product
Wireshark:
It is one of the most popular network protocol analyzers that follows the de facto standard across various non-profit and commercial enterprises, educational institutions, and government agencies.
Some features of Wireshark are as follow:
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It provides multi-platform compatibility, which means this network protocol analyzer can efficiently run on Linux, Windows, macOS, Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, etc.
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It has a standard three pane packet browser and can perform deep inspection of hundreds of protocols.
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It provides decryption support for several protocols, including Kerberos, IPsec, ISAKMP, WEP, SSL/TLS, SNMPv3, WEP, WPA/WP2, and many more.
Shodan:
Shodan is another reputed Search Engine for internet-connected devices and is used to get a data-driven view and helps in making useful decisions. Moreover, with Shodan, one can monitor all types of devices, which are easily accessible from the internet, and get a detailed view of services that are needed to secure.
Check out some exciting features of Shodan :
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It has developers searching, data streaming, crawling, and IP lookups and helps users use its APIs.
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It ensures to offer easy network monitoring assistance and provides notifications in real-time.
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One can use its browser plugins to know about the website’s security.
TCPDUMP
It is a robust command-line packet analyzer, a portable C/C++ library, libpcap, and helps in capturing network traffic.
Discover some features of TCPDUMP below:
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It offers complete documentation and details about bugs that you’ve reported.
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It allows track patches and bugs through GitHub.
SOASTA CloudTest
When it comes to having access to the Internet of Things Tools, one can choose SOASTA CloudTest because it provides cross-platform support and uses as a test management tool for performance monitoring and run tests effectively on many mobile gadgets.
Here are some features of SOASTA CloudTest :
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It has a very user-friendly design.
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It supports customization & is suitable for web applications.
Impact & Need of IoT Testing Across Industries
As you know, companies are using IoT more than ever because it helps them save the money which they spend on labor and makes it feasible for them to automate their processes. Besides, it provides maximum transparency when customers make any transactions and help them get delivery of quality products. But do you know how quality is improved in IoT? It’s IoT Testing that makes this thing happen because the purpose of IoT (Internet of Things) testing is to ensure that the device which is going to test will perform efficiently by keeping its functionality in mind.
Similarly, it ensures that the entire IoT network will work in proper synchronization and collaborate with each other to deliver the expected outcome. Therefore, when it comes to improving the quality of IoT applications, it becomes necessary to consider IoT testing because it lets you perform extensive testing and follow the various best test practices to your development cycle. For example, from security testing, compatibility testing, functionality to connectivity testing, one can perform different types of tests before launching any IoT device to the market.
How Does IoT Testing Impact Across Industries?
The purpose of IoT is to overcome various challenges that many nations are facing today, and its promise is to help get better results with IoT Testing. For instance,
For Agriculture – When performing IoT testing in Agriculture, it ensures resources like fertilizers and water will be utilized better, and one can easy to fulfill requirements of demand and supply.
For Healthcare – The effective IoT Testing in Healthcare ensures to provide on-demand health maps and can give you delivery of better disaster and emergency recovery.
For Smart Living – It assures to offer a quality life with better safety benefits.
For Transportation – with IoT Testing in Transportation, managing traffic in an intelligent way is possible.
For Environment – In this niche, you can monitor air quality and get confirmation about better waste management.
For Government – If you want to get accurate data for better decision-making, you should consider IoT Testing in Government to meet such needs and improve your accountability and transparency.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the approach for IoT testing can vary according to the different architecture or ecosystem of the system involved. We, at BugRaptors, welcome you to discuss your testing needs and ensure that our certified testers will help you get a relevant solution to ease your IoT development lifecycle. If you want to connect with us quickly on achieving your IoT testing goals, please help us to get your details.
