Release It!

Load Testing

With a new, untried system, the client knew that load testing would be critical to a successful launch. The client had budgeted a full month for load testing, longer than I had ever seen. Before the site could launch, marketing had declared that it must support 25,000 concurrent users.

What Is a Concurrent User?

Load testing companies often talk about “concurrent users,” when they really mean “bots.” Some business sponsors have picked up on the term and use it when they really mean “sessions.” There is no such thing as a “concurrent user.” Unless you are building a pure two-tier client/server system where users connect directly to the database, the concurrent user is fiction.

Counting concurrent users is a misleading ...