Load Testing with Kerberos

Load Tester™ can record testcases and execute load tests on Microsoft systems that use Kerberos authentication. No special configuration is required by the tester, other than (optionally) supplying a list of credentials (usernames and passwords) for the simulated user to authenticate with.

Load Tester™ understands the protocol (SPNGO) that Internet Explorer speaks to IIS servers when negotiating the authentication protocol. This process chooses between either Integrated Windows Authentication (a.k.a. NTLM) or Kerberos protocols. Because Kerberose is not widely used, Load Tester does not support that protocol. However, during load tests, Load Tester will ask the server to use Integrated Windows Authentication and under most system configurations, this will work transparently. While this is not the ideal solution, our customers have found that there is negligible performance difference between the two, so we are satisified that you will get results that are consistent with real-world usage.