ANDROFLEET: Testing WiFi peer-to-peer mobile apps in the large

Abstract

WiFi P2P allows mobile apps to connect to each other via WiFi without an intermediate access point. This communication mode is widely used by mobile apps to support interactions with one or more devices simultaneously. However, testing such P2P apps remains a challenge for app developers as i) existing testing frameworks lack support for WiFi P2P, and ii) WiFi P2P testing fails to scale when considering a deployment on more than two devices. In this paper, we therefore propose an acceptance testing framework, named Androfleet, to automate testing of WiFi P2P mobile apps at scale. Beyond the capability of testing point-to-point interactions under various conditions, An-drofleet supports the deployment and the emulation of a fleet of mobile devices as part of an alpha testing phase in order to assess the robustness of a WiFi P2P app once deployed in the field. To validate Androfleet, we demonstrate the detection of failing black-box acceptance tests for WiFi P2P apps and we capture the conditions under which such a mobile app can correctly work in the field. The demo video of Androfleet is made available from https://youtu.be/gJ5_Ed7XL04.