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Web-Based Policy-Management Tools

In our Syracuse University Real-World Labs®, we installed, configured and tested each of the five software packages. Before the first package was installed, we mirrored the Syracuse University Law School Web site to our test environment.

Our setup comprised four dual-Pentium 600-MHz servers running Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 SP 6a and Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0. The Web server hosted ASPs (Active Server Pages) that connected to our Microsoft SQL 7 server to provide dynamic content. We installed the latest Netscape Directory Server (4.12) and imported a user and group structure to simulate the user base the law school supports with custom Web technology.

We wanted to see how well these software solutions would integrate with existing directory stores and if they could simplify security and management for a highly customized Web site. For each product, we installed the back-end services software on a separate dual-Pentium 600-MHz Windows NT 4.0 server. The plug-in was installed on each of our three Web servers.

We then secured access to the Web site administration pages with user name/password authentication against our LDAP server. To simulate user sessions, we chose RadView Software WebLoad 4.51. WebLoad connected to nine Windows 2000 servers on our isolated, switched 100-Mbps Ethernet network.

For our test browsing session, we first tried to access the protected administration pages, then logged in when we were challenged for credentials. We browsed through 10 unprotected pages and two protected pages before ending the session. Using WebLoad, we recorded this session and synchronized our load servers with Web servers. WebLoad started with 150 user sessions distributed to all three Web servers (50 client connections per server). We increased the load by 100 client connections every 40 seconds. We stopped the test if one of three things happened: a Web server failed, WebLoad received more than 50 response errors (not time-outs), or we reached 2,000 simultaneous client connections. Once the test ended, we recorded the CPU usage.

We also recorded the total number of simultaneous connections, current and average number of transactions per second, current and average response time per Web page, and the sum total connection attempts and the sum total connection failures.

WebLoad 4.51, RadView Software, www.radview.com