webqresp 0.1.1

Hence name: WEB Quick RESPonse.

Install:

sudo apt-get install --yes gcc libevent-dev python-dev python-pip
sudo pip install webqresp

Usage:

webqresp http://example.com/
webqresp --repeat=3 --start=5 --response-seconds=0.5 --header='X-Name: Value' --content='{"name": "value"}' --method=POST http://example.com/some/page

• --repeat - Number of times to repeat the test, showing aggregated stats in the end. Default: 1.
• --start - Number of concurrent requests to start with. Default: 1.
• --response-seconds - Maximal response time in seconds for each request to pass the test. Default: 1.
• --header - Additional headers, e.g. --header='Content-Type: application/json' --header='X-Name: Value'.
• --content - Content for POST, etc. E.g. 'name1=value1&name2=value2' or '{"name1": "value1", "name2": "value2"}'.
• --method - HTTP Method. Default: GET.
• url - URL to test, e.g. http://example.com/some/page.

Criterion:

Maximal number of concurrent requests to the slowest URL while each request gets successful response within a second.

Why:

• Popular criterion Requests Per Second (RPS, req/s) has a great flaw of being confusing when comparing measurement before and after optimization. Please see explanation.

• Another criterion - Milliseconds Per Request (ms/req) calculated as 1000/(req/s) as proposed in the article above also has flaws:

  • It shows real response duration experienced by a user only when requests are sent sequentially, not concurrently:

    • Let’s take 100,000 requests and send them to a server in a sequence, waiting for each response before sending the next request. If server processes all this in 10 seconds, it is giving 10,000 req/s, and each request gets response in 0.1 ms - great!
    • Now let’s send 100,000 requests at the same time, not waiting for responses. If server processes all this in 10 seconds, it is giving the same 10,000 req/s, however while this criterion still shows false 0.1 ms, each request may get response in up to 10 seconds - that is not acceptable.

  • It still keeps proportion ambiguity:

    • Let’s take 10,000 req/s == 0.1 ms/req == 10,000 concurrent requests with 1 second for each response - this is acceptable.
    • The same 10,000 req/s == 0.1 ms/req == 100,000 requests with 10 seconds for each response - this is not acceptable.

• Our criterion is constructed so that:

  • It cares about real response duration for each user in the worst concurrent case.
  • It is not a proportion. It is not ambiguous. Once 1 second is reached or failure occurs, it stops incrementing concurrent requests and returns the result.

• Single slowest URL is chosen to save time configuring the tool, because anyway “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”.