1. Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
New challenges with push
application performance tests

2. Software provider (ISV) specializing in web
application performance tools
Founded in 2005
R&D, technical support located in France
Operations in the US and Germany
Publishes and markets NeoLoad software
Strong market acceptance
Over 900 clients in more than 60 countries
60% of turnover in export sales
Large number of customer references in all verticals
2Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Neotys Profile

3. Push applications (polling/streaming)
Concepts
New architectures involve new challenges
Server resources
Network usage
Performance needs
Load Testing push application
Scenario creation
Results analysis
Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Summary

4. Delivering a rich experience to the user
More connected
More interactive
More intuitive
Delivering “real time” information
Very reactive application
New kind of web applications: news headlines, stock
tickers, auction updates, gaming
4Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Push applications

5. Standard HTTP protocol
Asynchronous
Bi-directional communication
Client can send information to the server
Server can send information to the client
5Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Push applications

6. Push applications
Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010 6
Client Server
Polling interval
Polling interval
Event
Event
Event
Polling (pull)

7. Push applications
Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010 7
Client Server
Event
Event
Event
Client Server
Event
Event
Event
Long Polling Streaming

8. Network usage
More concurrent sockets open
More updates, more bandwidth
Server resources
More updates, more threads
More memory (for threads and clients states)
More CPU usage (“6” times)
Response time
Users expect “real time” updates
(300 ms / 5 000 ms)
8Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
New architectures involve new challenges

9. Scenario challenge
Record streaming applications
Detect streaming requests
Handle several responses in a single HTTP server response
Must create long polling scenario as well
Record polling / long polling applications
Lots of polling requests in the scenario
Other most significant requests lost in the scenario
9Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Load Testing push application

10. Scenario challenge
Handle push channel
Create second execution thread with push request
Be able to communicate between push and main thread
Framework knowledge
Create the scenario automatically
Add framework dynamic parameter correlation rules
10Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Load Testing push application

11. 11Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Load Testing push application
Long Polling scenario

12. Scenario challenge
Handle server responses from push channel
Several kinds of responses arrive from the push channel
Each server response may contain several messages
Perform some actions when a specific message arrives
Extract data only on known messages
12Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Load Testing push application

13. 13Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Load Testing push application
“Push message” object
Automatic split server
response in messages
Data extraction on specific
message
Specific action triggered on
message

14. HTTP response times are fairly meaningless
Long polling represents update frequency
Streaming represents the streaming time
Number of responses on the push channel
May have several messages in one response
May have lots of framework messages or not
important messages
14Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Results analysis (Challenges)

15. Compute message response times
Time delay between the moment the server decides
to update the client and the moment the client
receives the update
Client and server clocks need to be synchronized
Server update timestamp must be returned within the
messages
Statistics per specific messages
Number of messages received
Time when messages arrive
Time delay between first client and the last client
receive the update
15Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Results analysis

16. 16Neotys Copyright © All rights reserved - 2010
Questions / Answers