Practical Service Level Management: Delivering High-Quality Web-Based Services

Load Testing Benchmarks

One way to avoid the expense and time involved in doing your own load testing is to use reports generated by independent testing organizations. Most of these tests, also known as benchmarks, usually focus on a single element, such as a server, a load balancer, a router, and so forth. These independent tests can be very helpful, but care must also be taken. Bear in mind that product suppliers are often the ones that commission such tests; no reports are published that show the test sponsor losing.

There have been cases where the same testing organization has published different reports showing that the sponsor of each won hands down over the same competitors that beat them in a previous report. This happens for two reasons: ...