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F E A T U R E

Performance Monitors at Your Service

June 11, 2001
By Bruce Boardman

Atesto Technologies Automated Load Test and Site Response Watch

Atesto offers do-it-yourself Web site performance testing at a price that can't be beat. The script creation, test configuration, scheduling and analysis are up to you. The information you glean from the results will be commensurate with your experience. Reporting is flexible, and the process is very easy to learn and maintain.

The biggest drawback of Atesto's performance monitoring is the lack of analysis. You will have to figure out what the results are telling you. We managed to do this, but we also had the help of four other expertly run load tests.

Because the tests can be sorted and filtered by script, connection speed and location, it is easy to get an idea of what a user's experience might be. However, looking at the reports doesn't really tell you if that experience is good or bad or what to do about it.

Atesto's Automated Load Test and Site Response Watch

Click here to enlarge

For instance, initial response times in one test ranged from 50 seconds for 48 users to 65 seconds for 208 users. Fifty seconds seems like a long time, but when you realize that figure reflects an entire transaction (set of browsed pages), and it represents all the cities and all the connection speeds, it may not be all that bad. Unless you run a test with no load, however, you really can't be sure.

Data Confusion

We spent a lot of time trying to understand the data we received from Automated Load Test and Site Response Watch, especially as it related to one of our cites from which tests were run and monitored. We were given very flexible approaches to the data but could not completely diagnose what had happened. We would have liked to sort by city, backbone and transaction, but that wasn't an option.

We spent lots of time toggling among all the reports before we had a sense of what they were displaying and telling us. That's to be expected from a roll-your-own approach.

If you were using Atesto Technologies tools without the advantage of having run other tests, you'd have no way of knowing if its numbers were on target.

Automated Load Test and Site Response Watch, each starts at $3,000 (per quarter for 100 concurrent users), Atesto Technologies, (510) 405-5932, (866) 300-TEST. www.atesto.com

Send your comments on this article to Bruce Boardman at bboardman@nwc.com.