CODEWITHSUNDEEP
web-applicationsbenchmarking
user171561
user171561

Reputation:

Software for benchmarking a slow site?

I have a homegrown CMS running on multiple ISPs. End users have complained that viewing and administering their sites is slow. We suspect the problem is with different ISPs/server that we use. I am trying to determine a benchmark so I can look for a better/more consistent hosting option. To do so - I need data.

My goal is measuring load times for:

..and then being able to run the same tests on different servers.

Can anyone recommend software that would help me automate this?

I am on a MacBook running OSX 10.5x, but have access to Windows XP.

Thanks.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 177

Answers (5)

Dusda
Dusda

Reputation: 3368

Well, you will need several tools to accomplish what you're looking for (particularly automated testing for different times of the day), but you could find the most egregious problems with Firebug, a Firefox plugin.

Firebug has a number of handy tools, the most relevant here probably being the Net panel, which runs loading benchmarks on the various resources required to load the page.

alt text
(source: getfirebug.com)

http://getfirebug.com/

It also comes with a very cool integration with YSlow, Yahoo's page performance/grading tool. It will assign a grade (A-F) to a given page based on a ton of criteria, from the number of HTTP requests and javascript file sizes to stuff like "you should use a CDN to deliver content".

Upvotes: 2

MaxiWheat
MaxiWheat

Reputation: 6261

There are plenty of tools to do such things.

First of all, Firebug can be a good start, but the best part are the plugins developed by Google and Yahoo :

There is also this tool : http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ which can give you a nice report too.

Upvotes: 2

Pascal MARTIN
Pascal MARTIN

Reputation: 401182

For that kind of "complex" tasks, which implies working with identification, cookies, and all that, I've seen those tools being used :

If a simpler case (just fetching one page), ab is pretty nice -- but for a complex scenario, like going from one page to another, it doesn't do the job : it is only able to fetch one page.

A possibility a bit more evolved than ab, but less complex than OpenSTA, is Siege : nice thing is it can fetch static files linked from the page you are testing -- after all, JS, CSS, and images also have an impact on the loading time, as perceived by the user !

Upvotes: 0

Lance Rushing
Lance Rushing

Reputation: 7640

You can always use ab (apache bench).

# logged in user
ab -c 1 -n 100 -C SESSIONID=SESSIONVAL http://example.com/doFoo.php
""" SESSIONID=SESSIONVAL would be an your authentication tokens """

# not logged in user
ab -c 1 -n 100 http://example.com/doFoo.php

For the different times of day you'll have to run the tests at different times.

Upvotes: 0

Eric J.
Eric J.

Reputation: 150238

I have used JMeter for this type of benchmarking with good success.

You can script your test suite and then run them whenever you like, against different base URL's.

Upvotes: 2

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