Load Testing Blog
Web Performance, Inc. Releases Safari 4 Browser Performance Research Reports
Durham, NC (PRWEB) – Once again Apple is claiming the superiority of its Safari web browser, and once again Web Performance, Inc. (WPI) is testing that claim. WPI used its industry-leading Web performance web load and stress testing software to evaluate Safari’s performance in real time.
WPI tested Safari 4, Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), and Chrome 1, using Firefox 3.0 as a baseline. They tested all of the browsers on the top 15 most popular sites as ranked by Alexa.com as of February 3, 2009. Sites included Facebook, Google, eBay, craigslist, Yahoo, and Wikipedia. The real-time measurements were taken for both … Continue reading »
Beta Browser Shootout
The latest crop of beta browsers, IE 8, Safari 4, and Google’s Chrome first release are examined using the most popular websites to see if any of them are indeed faster than the competition.
Read the article.
Sharepoint Performance Case Study
Is your Sharepoint website slow? Are the servers under-utilized and the database shows no locking, but response times for the pages are still poor? Is Sharepoint unstable under load? We recently helped a client through the grueling process of optimizing and stabilizing a large Sharepoint installation. Once we discovered the underlying causes, the fixes were rather easy, but finding the performance bottlenecks was time consuming. We’ve described the process and the findings, so you can skip the hard part!
Read the case study.
Web Performance, Inc Boosts SHRM Website Capacity by 2,000 Percent in Time for Launch
Society for Human Resources Management website able to service its 250,000 members while introducing potential savings of $200,000.
Durham, NC – February 19, 2009 – The new Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) website was recently given a huge capacity boost in time for its unveiling, enabling the site to handle large amounts of traffic from its 250,000 members. Web Performance, Inc., (WPI) developers of industry-leading Web Performance Load Tester™ software, increased the site’s capacity from 100 to 2000 users, and reduced server requirements to less than 25% CPU utilization, eliminating two servers altogether and reducing potential software license expenses by … Continue reading »
Web Performance, Inc Boosts SHRM Website Capacity by 2,000 Percent in Time for Launch
Society for Human Resources Management website able to service its 250,000 members while introducing potential savings of $200,000.
Durham, NC – February 19, 2009 – The new Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) website was recently given a huge capacity boost in time for its unveiling, enabling the site to handle large amounts of traffic from its 250,000 members. Web Performance, Inc., (WPI) developers of industry-leading Web Performance Load TesterTM software, increased the site’s capacity from 100 to 2000 users, and reduced server requirements to less than 25% CPU utilization, eliminating two servers altogether and reducing potential software license expenses by … Continue reading »
Virtual User Calculators
Customers frequently ask us for help deciding how many virtual users they need for their load tests. We have a number of formulas for calculating this, depending on what information the customer has available. Last weekend I built online calculators for a few of the more popular variations. Give them a try!
If these don’t apply to the data you have available, contact us and we’ll be happy to help you calculate the number of simulated users required for your specific needs!
Measuring the Performance Effects of Dynamic Compression in IIS 7.0
Enabling dynamic compression in IIS 7.0 can reduce the bandwidth usage on a particular file by up to 70%, but also reduces the maximum load a server can handle and may actually reduce site performance if the site compresses large dynamic files. Read the full report for a complete analysis.
Tutorial Comments
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Measuring the Performance Effects of mod_deflate in Apache 2.2
Enabling mod_deflate can reduce the bandwidth usage on a particular file by up to 70%, but also reduces the maximum load a server can handle and may actually reduce site performance if the site compresses large dynamic files. Read the full report for a complete analysis.
Is the last mile relevant to Load Testing?
One of our competitors has recently been emphasizing the use of their monitoring network during load tests. The pitch goes something like this: “With our last-mile monitoring network you can determine how different geographical regions will experience your web pages.” This solution has been implemented by using testing agents in the homes of real consumers to measure performance during a load test.
At first glance, this peaked our interest. However, after some analysis, we started to question the real value of this approach to load testing:
Will this approach dilute the value of the load test results?
Can the same information be obtained … Continue reading »