Patent ID: 8838819

Claim:
A method of communicating control information between a first component and a second component of a computer network system in packet-based communication, comprising the steps of: assigning by the first component a control sequence for communicating information between the first component and the second component, the control sequence defining test control information for emulating a behavior profile associated with a user of the computer network system, wherein the behavior profile specifies one or more user activities selected from a group comprising a plurality of user activities performed by the user over the computer network system, and one or more bandwidth usage levels corresponding to the one or more user activities; embedding by the first component meta information based at least in part on the control sequence into one or more fields in a packet to be sent to the second component, the one or more fields available according to a protocol and specifying at least data information, the meta information overriding one or more values of the one or more fields without corrupting the data information in the packet, the protocol and the data information being selected based at least in part on the emulation of the activity associated with the user of the computer network system, wherein the protocol is selected from the group comprising HTTP, HTTPS, SIP, RTSP, and MGCP, and wherein the one or more fields are custom message elements from the protocol; sending the packet from the first component to the second component, the sending causing the second component to parse the packet and determine the meta information from the one or more fields in the packet; and receiving a response by the first component from the second component according to the meta information; wherein the packet sent from the first component to the second component passes through a device under test (DUT); wherein the meta information comprises an encoded instruction for controlling the behavior of the second component without affecting the operation of the DUT.