Understand The Fundamentals Of Website Performance

Your performance is based on improving your minimizing and optimizing performance of the amount of content the user is expected to download. If you would like to improve your code efficiency you have to have regular testing that involves loading. After you improve your code performance you need a way to test it. Loading helps you to understand the effects of low bandwidths and latency. Knowing your server will operate under regular traffic is a good idea, but knowing how it will react to peak traffic is highly recommended.

The Ins And Outs Of Stress Testing

Stress Testing depends solely on the performance of your operating systems immediate interaction between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. When you have a clear understanding of these functions you can minimize crashing. Many people are under the impression that crashes come with a warning message, but they also contribute to low performance and the immediate crashing of your webpage. The goal is to produce a website that gives your customers the highest level of customer service excellence. Ironically, you get the rendered pixels when and where you need it.

There are a few do and don’t when you’re performing website load testing and stress testing on your operating system that will allow you to deliver high performance to your customers. It depends on your system having high connectivity or is it poor and unreliable. You should always have a testing method running in the background of all your software applications to ensure maximum performance. However, a wide range of tools can be used to secure your server and bandwidth. You can learn more about testing through internet research on loading and stress testing options.

You can get immediate loading options or offline testing for your performance needs. They will maximize your successful launch of an application including delivery performance.

Testing Systems to the Breaking Point

Load testing is actually as simple as it sounds (in name, not necessarily in practice). Simply put, load testing or stress testing is the act of pushing software or hardware to its limit, either virtually or physically, to see what its limits are. This process allows a developer to identify the breaking points of a particular piece of software or hardware before it becomes available for public access. This type of testing is common in web design, game design, programming, hardware production, and web server maintenance.

For example, before an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) goes live, it’s typical for the developers to push the system to its limit using virtual accounts to identify how many concurrent users a particular game server can handle before it reaches its limit and shuts down. This allows for the practice of putting blocks in place that will not allow further connections to a server once the maximum numbers of allowed concurrent users has been reached.

Another great example comes in the form of E-commerce. Unlike brick and mortar stores, online stores such as Amazon don’t have a physical space in which maximum occupancy is defined by terms of floor real-estate. However, especially in the case of Amazon, the number if customers accessing the store simultaneously exceeds that of a brick and mortar store exponentially. This means that a store will need to test how many users one particular server can handle before it is overloaded. Furthermore, a store will need to test how many users doing separate functions can be supported, such as users viewing different items, users viewing their cart, users on the checkout screen, or even users simply idling on the site. Stress testing the servers allows the store to allocate multiple servers as needed to handle the demands of incoming website traffic and allows them to pre-emptively combat server crashes which could cause a loss in revenue.

Another prime example of stress testing comes in the form of hardware such as GPU’s or graphics processing units. In this method of testing, extremely large strings of data (think overclocking) are forced into the GPU to see at which point it either crashes due to an overload or sustains physical damage due to thermal extremes. This is especially important for high-end GPU’s which are used for gaming, being as these are commonly overclocked by an end-user whose satisfaction depends on how effectively the GPU can handle processing large strings of data. You can also do API testing to in certain games such as web based games if necessary to ensure that all of your APIs work properly and the games work as they’re should. With video games and video editing software becoming more and more demanding as both mediums progress into higher definition territory, stress testing is of utmost importance to ensure quality. Needless to say, load testing is a cornerstone of modern technology.

Load Testing Explained

When you first start a website, it’s important to know that it will operate smoothly. If they don’t, this will set a very bad initial impression, and the people that first visit your site will be unlikely to return. Unfortunately, some websites run less smoothly when there is significant traffic. In order to start off on a good foot, load testing (also called stress testing) is recommended for all new website owners. This essentially means that the website is tested with artificial traffic, and it is observed. If it does not run smoothly, you can work out the issues prior to officially launching the website.

There are a number of different services that are available for this. When you simply type in load testing services on a search engine, there are numerous results that come up. However, how do you know which service is the best one to use? Well, there are different things to consider. While price is a factor, do not simply use the cheapest service that you find. It is crucial that the service is reputable, because the success of your new website could depend upon it.

One option is to use the services of large, well-known companies. This will ensure that the services provided are reputable. For instance, IBM offers load testing services for website owners. The name of the service that they provide is the Rational Performance Tester. There also is a Java Desktop App that is used to stress test websites. This service is quite well known and reputable. Another service is available from Microsoft. Microsoft’s Visual Studio is very well known, and it has been used to test many successful websites. The number and success of the websites that have been tested by Microsoft Visual Studio is quite impressive to say the least, and it can work well for your website, as well.

However, there are often drawbacks to specific services, even if they are reputable ones. For this reason, it is crucial to do significant research on any load testing program that you use. Read reviews of the service, prior to using it. In many cases, there will be a significant number of reviews, and this can give you a good idea of what other people think of the service. If the reviews appear negative or there are specific drawbacks that stand out, simply find another service. There are many of them out there.

Four Benefits of Load Testing

Anticipate Peak End User Load Reaction

Most systems are made with an end user mindset, and no user is willing to wait while the system dares to say still loading or this may take a while. The user has a limit. One of the possible repercussions of system overload is reduced functionality and speeds. With regular testing and upgrade retest including functional concurrency user testing on various platforms, you can tell how the system will respond.

For example, in web servers and websites, crash and error messages can further load the system beyond its capacity. Such system problems may require re-installation, something that may take long. Assuming you are selling live streaming access for a sporting event, an hour of system failure can mean complete loss of revenue. Only through in-depth analysis of the maximum loads and expected behavior can you truly be confident that you can remain functional.

Risk Allowance or Avoidance

Think of the run-time or the bottom line when referring to the functionality of servers, websites or other software, once they break down, that is revenue lost and cost escalated on the opposite direction. The system cannot stay down forever; you’ll need to rectify the problem sooner or later. A system crash can be fatal and may cause further damage.

Sufficient load and stress testing regimen before launch and continuously as per the upgrade demands can go a long way in knowing, anticipating and mitigating system limits.

Understand System Performance

Three things are important when it comes to performance. They are response time, throughput time and utility levels. If one of this is not happening and peak condition, system breakage is inevitable. How else would you test for the three metrics if not through data collection from continuous and remedial load testing?

Some developers make the mistake of thinking that system breaking point is always beyond the peak condition. This is not entirely accurate. System loads have been known to occur elsewhere apart from end user interface. Unresponsive scripts, system lag, hardware inefficiencies, intrusions, and malware, can all reduce the software, server, or websites optimal levels.

Once you know your system, you can stay on top of things when system performance goes below the expected levels. You can use a variety of tools to do this, and there are typically two categories: free and paid. Free tools would be something like Selenium, and paid tools would be something like LoadView.

Stay Hustle Free

Do continuous stress testing of the system especially before and after expected system overload. You will save yourself from spending man hours rectifying a system of diagnosing problems; your system will retain peak conditions, and you can stay hustle free.

The Importance of Stress Testing a Nonprofit Website

Stress testing is a form of performance testing and a critical part in the development of any network, software, or computer program. It is primarily done in a lab environment prior to release of the product to ensure it maintains a high performance rate.

This is done by placing the object of the test in artificially generated unfavorable conditions to measure its performance, typically based on the number of reoccurring system crashes or other such errors.

The artificial adverse conditions may include but are not limited to trying to access one Web site as many times as possible and as fast as possible. Hacking the system and converting it into what’s called a “zombie.” This is then used to send out waves of spam. Using malware like viruses and Trojans to infect the computer, intentionally slowing its performance. That creates a lot of multitasking by having the system try to run more than one complex and high resource applications all at one time on a single console, bombarding the system with pointless junk mail and useless messages.

If the object continues to perform initially then the conditions are intensified. After all, it wouldn’t be called a stress test if it were easy would it? The system is pushed to its limit with careful, incremental increases of the individual stresses. All the time this is going on performance is being carefully analyzed and evaluated based on a variety of different factors.

Any system will eventually break down after enough of this sort of treatment. To borrow a sports term the stress test is more about endurance. It is designed to see how the system will perform in the worst possible circumstances to expose flaws in its internal workings or simply establish a base line for performance.

Stress testing is definitely a time intensive undertaking; however its importance cannot be understated. Developers use such information to create systems that fail slowly and steady. This may sound defeatist but nothing in invulnerable, especially in the continuously upgrading world of technology. This sort of system maintains core functionality making it easier to locate the problem and correct it before the damage becomes irreversible.

How Stress Testing Relates to Nonprofits

The information about should show you that stress testing is important, but what if you’re not a big business? What if you’re a smaller company or a nonprofit that doesn’t have a lot of money to spend? Is load or stress testing worth doing? The truth is that yes, it is worth doing! It’s even more important if you don’t have a high quality server because you need to ensure then that it’s well-optimized.

The truth is that it’s not easy to find hosting for nonprofits, and even harder to optimize a slow server. This doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but it will definitely take some work. Is it worth doing? Absolutely, because the people who are interested in your cause will be better able to view your site and learn about you message if it’s working well and not loading slowly. So, hopefully now after reading this page you better-understand the importance of not only stress testing a more popular website, but also something smaller like a nonprofit site.