Load Testing Blog
Load Tester LITE/PRO 5.3 Released
Web Performance Inc is proud to release Load Tester PRO/LITE 5.3, which focuses on usability. The biggest change you’ll notice is the completely redesigned test case table, with inline editing, undo, drag and drop, multi-select, and new replay layout. Drag and drop works with either individual transactions or entire web pages, and as you play with the new widget notice details such as inline editing and customizable table columns. Select a series of web pages or transactions, and right-click to edit think times or page load time goals. The new table is also customizable; right-click on … Continue reading »
Load Tester 5.2 Released
Yesterday we released Load Tester 5.2. This release contained a handful of UI improvements intended to improve the experience for first-time users. There are no changes in capabilities for PRO users in this version, so new license keys will not be issued except upon request. Don’t worry – the 5.3 release is coming right on its heels with some big UI improvements that we know all of our users will appreciate!
LITE users, however, will see a very big change in the 5.2 release compared with 5.1. This change both adds and subtracts important features to the LITE version. As a … Continue reading »
Load Testing with IPv6 and the RackSpace Cloud
Over in this post, I showed how easy it is to configure IPv6 load testing in Load Tester — it’s all very easy with the possible exception of this part: “you need a load engine with IPv6 connectivity”. If you don’t have IPv6 connectivity from your location with sufficient bandwidth for testing or you need to test from another location, then you will access to a load generator (we call them load engines) with an IPv6 connection. Surprisingly, this can still be a challenge. Indeed, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that our own cloud engines don’t support IPv6 … Continue reading »
Load testing a website with IPv6 traffic
Are your apps ready for IPv6 users? Many organizations have started to support access to their applications via IPv6 addresses, and along with that comes the need to include IPv6 traffic in the load test plan. Indeed, we recently tested our customer portal to be sure it was accessible via IPv6 (it is – the application is deployed on Google’s AppEngine infrastructure, which includes IPv6 accessibility baked-in).
Of course, before you get to load testing, you should start with a basic connectivity check to ensure your website is accessible from IPv6 routes – you can use a tool such as … Continue reading »
Patch Available for IE SSL Bug
A recent Microsoft security advisory and subsequent patch unfortunately disabled SSL recording with Internet Explorer on all released versions of Web Performance Load Tester, Load Tester PRO, and Trainer. SSL recording with Firefox was not affect, but other browsers have not yet been tested.
If you have a current support contract you can update any 5.0 or later release by using Help->Software Updates, and selecting “Search for updates of currently installed features”. Follow the instructions to install patch 5.1.111161. If you have a current support contract, but have not yet upgraded to to 5.0 the most recent installer … Continue reading »
Load Tester PRO™ 5.1 Released
Fast on the heels of the initial 5.0 PRO release, 5.1 is a major upgrade that includes support for mobile load testing, a completely resigned load test design and control system, improved support for dynamically scalable websites, Internet Explorer 10 support, and portal license manager integration.
Mobile Load Testing
The increasing web traffic from mobile devices has been noticed for years, but how much does it really effect a website? A recent study shows that 7% of web traffic is from mobile devices, which includes both phones and tablets. Because these devices use different browsers, and sometimes access different versions … Continue reading »
How do you want to buy Load Testing software?
We are taking a fresh look at how load testing is priced and sold, and would really appreciate your help. If you could just take 2 minutes and answer this short, 3 question survey, your name will be entered into a drawing for a new iPad, to be awarded on Friday, April 27th.
Spotting Problems the Easy Way with Load Tester 5 Visual Comparison
One of the most frustrating jobs of writing a testcase is figuring out what went wrong when the test gives you an error message. Other tools may give you terse error messages, indicating there is a problem with the page. Load Tester 5 now makes this easy an automatic with a quick Visual Content Compare tool.
Let’s take a look at an example testcase using a simple workflow:
User logs into a web site
The user selects a link on the greeting page
User logs out
When working with a dynamic web application like this, when a page changes, that’s OK. We expect the greeting … Continue reading »
Testing Auto-Scaling Servers with Load Tester 5.1
One of the easiest ways to create a system that keeps up with sudden increases in demand is to use auto-scaling systems offered by many cloud providers. The concept of bringing new systems online to handle demand is nothing new: this has also been used by CDNs for years to replicate high demand data to edge locations. Testing this type of system, however, can become more challenging when the auto-scaling relies on updating DNS records in order to route new users to new servers.
In Load Tester 5.0 and earlier, Load Tester could be set to Continue reading »
iPad or iPhone iOS Load Testing
With the rapid growth of tablets and smart phone purchases, the popularity of mobile browsers have increased significantly. Our own site has seen an increase in mobile traffic from 0.2% of two years ago, to 2.5% mobile traffic today. Due to the increase in popularity of mobile browsers, it is becoming essential to test the performance of your website on a mobile device as well.
Web Performance Load Tester records all the HTTP traffic between the browser and server through a transparent proxy, this allows for Load Tester to be flexible with the types of browsers that can be emulated during a … Continue reading »