QW2002 Paper 7I1 Mr. Philip Joung (Caw Networks) Get Real! The Importance of Realism in Web Site Capacity Assessment

Key Points

• Achieving reliable Web site load testing results means generating realistic traffic
• It must model both user behavior and network behavior, currently uncommon in Web testing
• Network issues(packet loss, link latency, jitter, etc) significantly affect performance

Presentation Abstract

What is real world capacity assessment? It is carefully combining the aspects of not only user realism, but network realism in order to achieve reliable, accurate results during Web site and network performance testing. User and network realism includes important measures such as packet loss, link speeds, millions of IP addresses, browser emulation, SSL, and other factors that can cause significant performance issues. The Internet has all these issues, and testing with these values are an important part of gaining a clear picture of system performance from the start and in the safety of the test lab. In-house and industry studies have shown dramatic performance issues with even small amounts of network realism thrown in: NASA has shown that only 3% packet loss causes a 50% drop in FTP performance.

About the Author

Philip Joung has worked in various IT related jobs since 1987. After working at a CASE tool software consultancy for two years, he helped start the company Embark.com (which still thrives today as the largest, most trafficked Web site for students going to college) in 1996. He joined as the Webmaster to run the technology side of the 7 person company. By the end of 1999, the company had 300 people, and Mr. Joung was the Chief Systems Architect. He ran Embark.com’s IT systems, and in 1999, grew the network to a large $12 million network operations center with 150 servers, redundant Internet lines, 2 tons of battery backups and a large, 1-ton generator. Scaling this network required testing, but often the testing did not provide an accurate picture of the performance in production.
After four and a half years with Embark.com, Mr. Joung left to join Caw Networks, a company devoted to finding the true capacity of network systems and Web sites. He took this opportunity to help them develop a solution that would solve many of the scalability headaches at Embark.com. Mr. Joung is now helping to get the word out about this company’s products and the reasons why user and network realism matters.
Philip Joung has presented at various technical seminars internal to the companies he has worked at. At Caw Networks, he’s presented at various trade shows such as N+I as a demonstrator and more than a dozen Caw Networks customer workshops. He is also scheduled to speak at STAREast in May, at N+I Tokyo in July, and CMG 2002 in December.