Load Impact
| Developer(s) | Load Impact (Gatorhole AB) |
|---|---|
| Type | Load testing tools |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | http://loadimpact.com |
Load Impact is a cloud-based service for load testing and website optimization. It generates traffic load by simulating users.[1] Load Impact is a so-called freemium service in that it offers a free option as well as a premium option, where the latter gives access to more features.[2] Apart from the service itself, Load Impact does open research on topics such as browser behavior and slashdotting.
Main components
Load Impact consists of two main parts, the load testing tool and the page analyzer.
Load testing tool
The load testing tool generates simulated user traffic to a website. Users can simulate virtual users who are trying to load the web pages at the same time. While simulating the traffic, the tool records how fast pages are loaded from the server. This lets users know how fast the site is (as experienced by a user) when it is being accessed by many users at the same time. Results are displayed in real time throughout the test process.[3]
The tool is cloud-based and provides on-demand load testing.[4] It also features a session recorder that lets users browse the site like a regular user, while the actions are recorded.[5] The recorded session can then be used when running load tests, to make the simulated clients behave just as how the user recorded it.
There are three different types of load test:[2]
1. Fixed - Test with static load level throughout the test.
2. Ramp-up - Test that starts at a low level and increases stepwise until it reaches a maximum predetermined level.
3. Timeout - Ramp-up tests that increase the load level until the server becomes too slow, or when the maximum load level is reached.
Page analyzer
The page analyzer loads a web page the same way a web browser would. It shows the user what objects were loaded, in what order, and how long each object took to load. It also gives the user information about return codes, compression ratio, etc. and provides some general statistics about the page in a summary at the end.
The load times are represented as colored bars which is divided into several components. They are:[6]
- Time in queue (grey)
- DNS lookup time (orange)
- Connection time (yellow)
- Time to first byte (green)
- Download time (blue)
The page analyzer can emulate these browsers and indexing bots:[6]
- Chrome (1,2,3,4)
- Firefox (3,3.5)
- Googlebot (2.1)
- Internet Explorer (6,7,8)
- MSNbot (1.1)
- Opera (9.64)
- Safari (3.2,4)
- Yahoo! Slurp
Popularity as a load test tool
As of April 2013, Load Impact reported that more than 750,000 individual load tests had been carried out through its website.