Traditional approach in performance testing does not include client side processing time (i.e. DOM Content Load, Page Render, JavaScript Execution, etc.) as part of response times, performance tests has always been conducted to stress the server so tools like Jmeter have been very popular to execute tests. With increasing complexity of architectures (Web, Browser, Mobile) on the client side it has been important to understand the real user experience. Commercial tools have started to provide features that can provide insights into real user experience after the bytes are transferred to the client end. With the ability to call Selenium scripts via Jmeter the ability to conduct real user experience tests using open source stack has opened up new avenues to comment on real user experience. This enables us to comment on
- Provides Page load times similar to On Load time of real browsers
- Generates HAR file with following statistics
- Details of summary of request times and content types
- Waterfall chart with page download time breakdown statistics such as DNS resolution time, Connection time, SSL handshaking time, Request send time, wait time and receive time.
By integrating the open source stack tools it enables us to provide the same insights which a commercial of the shelf tools would offer. At Gallop we have implemented this at multiple clients providing them insights into various bottlenecks at the client side which helped us to provide greater value proposition