AbstractIn a previous article, a stress testing methodology was reported to detect network traffic‐related Real‐Time (RT) faults in distributed RT systems based on the design UML model of a System Under Test (SUT). The stress methodology, referred to as Test LOcation‐driven Stress Testing (TLOST), aimed at increasing the chances of RT failures (violations in RT constraints) associated with a given stress test location (an network or a node under test). As demonstrated and experimented in this article, although TLOST is useful in stress testing different test locations (nodes and network, it does not guarantee to target (test) all RT constraints in an SUT. This is because the durations of message sequences bounded by some RT constraints might never be exercised (covered) by TLOST. A complementary stress test methodology is proposed in this article, which guarantees to target (cover) all RT constraints in an SUT and detect their potential RT faults (if any). Using a case study, this article shows that the new complementary methodology is capable of targeting the RT faults not detected by the previous test methodology. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.