JMeter, from Apache, is a load and performance testing tool.
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Spirent TestCenter
Score 8.0 out of 10
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The vendor describes Spirent TestCenter is an end-to-end testing solution that delivers performance with deterministic answers. They state service providers, NEMs and enterprises use it to test, measure and validate their networks and deploy services with confidence—from traditional performance testing to the rigorous analysis of Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Mobile Backhaul, and High Speed Ethernet.
JMeter is well suited for Java applications where the user can script the scenario once and make changes to accommodate for as many numbers of users for load test execution. The image and selection of any files or exporting files scenario is handled well.
It is less appropriate to test Ajax applications where it is required to script click per use.
Spirent solution is well suited to qualify a Lan infrastructure bandwidth capacity or a device itself capacity such as a router or a firewall for example. But this solution in our case is also well suited to test a complex and numbered mpls environment. I would not recommend it to a small business as the solution is very expensive: châssis and card cost are expensive and the solution requires to be an advanced user in system, not only on network devices
Easy of use - in generate load like HTTP requests, and processing/analyzing the responses. No coding is necessary at the basic level, just need to understand load testing and the infrastructure being tested.
Automatic management of things like cookies to help with session state support - so you don't specifically have to worry about it or handle it
Lots of testing/configuration options to suit your needs in making the right load generation (sampling requests), and analyzing the results, including any pre and post processing of the results first. Things like the Beanshell/BSF pre/post processors, response assertion, regular expression extractor, XPath extractor, CSV data set config
There is a JMeter cloud service called BlazeMeter that I think would be useful for those that need to scale up high load without provisioning their own systems. I've not personally tried it though, but I recently attended a meetup presentation that highlighted nice useful features that BlazeMeter provides. One should evaluate the service if they are considering JMeter and need to expand beyond existing hardware resources.
Jmeter requires many tweaks with respect to its configuration file and thread properties. users need to edit theses files themselves. There could be some interface where we can edit this fields.
Jmeter cannot handle more threads and hangs up when we increase the number of threads. This causes lot of inconvenience. In these situations, user can be notified that such change would be lead to slow performance so that user can do as required. The same appears when we try to view huge files on graph listener.
Jmeter should optimize the read and write access to output csv since it acts as overhead to the I/O performance. This affects our test results for the application which we are testing.
Price, Wiki and user sharing. Having access to the information provided by the developers and other open source providers is key for me. The ability to share information and get answers directly is very important to success in software testing. And the price of this product currently is amazing. Too many companies charge way too much money for products that are far behind in their value and pertinence
I can jump right into a new test plan and start building from scratch. The natural progression from test plan to thread group and then designing the basic format of the process is very streamlined and smooth. With only slight modifications I can build out a very complex model from a very basic beginning.
I have been using JMeter for the last year. By using this tool, you can make sure the system will work under varied loads. It helps us to simulate real time scenarios by creating required virtual users and make sure the application will work under load. Perform load, stress, and stability testing using JMeter.
I have used LoadRunner and Silkperformer, and so far Jmeter turns out be the easiest to use of all these. While each of them have their own ROI, Jmeter can be picked by anyone in hours and start testing within a day. While with other tools, we need to get license, install them (takes a while) and setup tests and firewalls, etc.
I wasn't able to specifically test other big products but I did use other free products in the past such as iperf, but free softwares don't allow the same level of support ans ease to use than Spirent
