A methodology for unit testing actors in proprietary discrete event based simulations

This paper presents a dependency injection based, unit testing methodology for unit testing components, or actors, involved in discrete event based computer network simulation via an xUnit testing framework. The fundamental purpose of discrete event based computer network simulation is verification of networking protocols used in physical-not simulated-networks. Thus, use of rigorous unit testing and test driven development methodologies mitigates risk of modeling the wrong system. We validate the methodology through the design and implementation of OPNET-Unit, an xUnit style unit testing application for an actor oriented discrete event based network simulation environment, OPNET Modeler.