Application Performance Engineering Blog – Shunra Software

Everyone knows that performance of Web sites is critical to their success. In order to build a well performing Web page, everyone also knows that testing needs to be done early and often. What most people do not seem to know is what or how to test.

This recent Microsoft Developer Zone Magazine article does a good job of outlining common issues with Web pages, and gives specific examples for how you can improve your page design and testing. One common question I am asked is ‘under what network conditions should Web pages be tested?’ Surely the best approach is to know exactly who your customers are and then tailor your testing to model their network connectivity. Unfortunately most Web pages do not have a clear enough picture of their users’ network demographics to build such a model. Instead of worrying about the details, this article explains a different approach:

“At Microsoft, we use a WAN simulator benchmark of 300/64Kbps bit rate, 300ms RTT for global content and 50ms RTT for local Content Delivery Networks. Our packet loss setting is 3%. This benchmark allows us to test across multiple versions of multiple applications and see their relative performance in the same environment.” – Jim Pierson, Microsoft

Read the article