Load Testing Blog
User-Level Analysis of Performance Results
By analyzing data against applied user levels, rather than only against elapsed time, Load Tester permits better understanding of performance and of capacity.
Load Testing Fallacies: It’s Not Ready for Testing
There is a new Load Testing 101 post over on the Dynatrace Blog. Overall, I think it is a pretty good article. However, it illustrates some of the fallacies of load testing that we hear from time to time. In this article, I want to dispel a fallacy that might be inadvertently reinforced by that post. Please note that I don’t want to speak for the authors – so I encourage you to read their article and judge their meaning for yourself.
Load Testing with IE 8.0, Firefox 3.5
The performance improvements in the latest browsers (Internet Explorer 8.0 and Firefox 3.5) have been eagerly awaited for many months…though they come at a price.
Removing Ad-servers and Click-trackers from your Load Test
We field a lot of questions about load testing websites with 3rd party components on the pages containing advertisements or user tracking mechanisms. For many of our users, we recommend leaving these out of the load test entirely. For some users this causes some concern over maintaining the realism of the load test. In this post, I’m going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of dealing with these in a load test – and then provide some quick instructions for easily keeping these services out of your load test.
I’ll start by looking at the possible advantages of including these services … Continue reading »
Announcing Load Tester 4: Push-button Cloud-based Performance Testing
Web testers are about to discover a whole new level of performance testing with the release of Load Tester, Version 4.0 from Web Performance, Inc. (WPI). Load Tester 4 gives users access to the cloud network—a virtual network of servers spread across the globe—to let developers conduct performance tests outside their own networks and simulate greater numbers of potential site visitors.
“Our latest version of Load Tester was designed to generate loads from both in the lab and outside the network,” says Michael Czeiszperger, founder of WPI. “Along with all the benefits of previous releases, Version 4.0 lets our customers specify … Continue reading »
Web Performance Load Tester 3.6 Gives Web Developers Easier, More Accurate Tests
New software includes click to configure test case development, visual performance indicators, user-level analysis and expanded compatibility with AJAX and .NET.
Durham, NC – May 7, 2009 – Web Performance, Inc. (WPI) released the most recent version of its industry-leading load testing application last week. Web Performance Load Tester version 3.6 includes a number of new features that make it even easier to use and more intuitive for its non-programmer user base.
One of the application’s most appealing new features is its use of visual displays and video demonstrations that let users with zero programming experience create test cases, run load … Continue reading »
Velocity Conference – Day 3
A great deal of time at the Velocity Conference has been spent on client-side performance optimization. This encompasses changes to the page structure and sub-elements to speed the delivery of a usable page to the user. Here at Web Performance, we have primarily been concerned with server-side performance – due to our focus on load-testing. Client-side optimization, however, benefits the users even when the server is not under load. It is something that we would like to expend more effort on when working with our clients.
Some of the most common client-side optimization techniques discussed were:
1) Reducing round-trips to the server
reduce … Continue reading »
Business Impacts of Performance
One of the opening sessions of the Velocity 2009 conference was a joint session with engineers from Microsoft Live Search (Bing) and Google Search…yes, they were together on the same stage :>
Both organizations wanted to measure the effects of performance on the business – i.e. on revenue. Revenue for search sites is based on the number of searches and on the number of clicks on results. Both of the search giants have experimentation platforms which allow them to send a small portion of real users to a different version of the search platform, where they can modify the user experience … Continue reading »
Velocity Conference – Day 1
My first day at Velocity was long, but fun. I breathed a sigh of relief when my luggage finally arrived…10 hours after I did.
I attended part of a Load Testing workshop early in the afternoon that raised some interesting topics:
Why are steady ramps bad? They showed some examples of how this approach can result in the wrong conclusions about system capacity. I agreed heartily – I’ve blogged on the merits of a stepped ramp in load tests previously.
Abandonment rates – This is a feature that I’d like to get into Load Tester sooner rather than later. A basic … Continue reading »
Load Testing Services Help Mammoth Mountain Ski Area Gear Up for 2009/2010 Pass Sales
High Anticipated Demand is Met with Aplomb
MAMMOTH LAKES, CA – For the first time in several years, Mammoth Mountain opened up sales of their popular Mammoth Value Pass (MVP) to new purchasers. Given that there were only 38,000 passes available, and those passes were only being sold for one month, Mammoth Mountain’s web site had to be up to speed and capable of handling the load or, as Brahm Goodis, Web Developer for Mammoth Mountain, said, “it was crucial to make sure our site could handle the potential load.” Mammoth Mountain had used the load testing services of … Continue reading »