ChatGPT Assisted JMeter Load Testing

There has been a lot of excitement surrounding large language models (LLMs) and especially ChatGPT made available by OpenAI. Heralded as a paradigm in making powerful AI capabilities widely accessible, the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models behind the ChatGPT interface continue to find uses in business, data science, linguistics, and writing that did not exist in the short time before their release. In this article, we will illustrate how the LLM behind ChatGPT can be leveraged toRead More →

TCP/IP Testing using the JMeter TCP Sampler

While the primary focus of JMeter is on application-level HTTP-based testing, it also supports protocol-level TCP/IP testing using the TCP sampler.  In this post, we will review the basic setup of the TCP Sampler, and how to use it in your JMeter tests. This component allows JMeter testers to simulate network-level protocols and evaluate the performance of systems that rely on TCP/IP messaging, but not necessarily HTTP calls. Examples of these include internet of things (IoT)Read More →

JMeter 5.6.2

RedLine13 now supports JMeter 5.6.2 as it has been made a generally available release.  You can find all the updates in the Release Notes for JMeter, but we have highlighted a few important changes below: Multiple Security Fixes There are multiple security fixes that have been released between versions 5.6 and 5.6.2 of JMeter.  One particular security vulnerability in JMeter version 5.5 was recently discovered and described as a critical issue.  In exploiting this, it couldRead More →

How to Select the Best JMeter Thread Group

In this article, we will describe when it might be best to use each type of JMeter Thread Group.  Examples of test plan elements that a thread group may contain include HTTP samplers, logical preprocessors and postprocessors, timers, and many other components within a test plan.  The most elementary component is the basic Thread Group, which is a simple container for requests and other operations in many JMeter tests. Types of JMeter Thread Groups JMeter offersRead More →

The JMeter Open Model Thread Group

In previous blog posts we covered how the basic Thread Group is extended to perform more advanced functionality through the Custom Thread Groups package, and other similar plugins such as the Arrivals Thread Group.  One that we have yet to discuss is the Open Model Thread Group.  Presently, this built-in thread group is still marked as experimental, however it is available and used in current production releases in JMeter. Conceptually the Open Model Thread Group isRead More →

JMeter Thread Group

As the essential component that contains samplers and logic controllers, the Thread Group is the element that most JMeter tests start with. JMeter uses a Thread Group as the container to define a collection of simulated users. In this way, one or more requests contained within the Thread Group will follow a prescribed virtual user count, ramp-up time, and looping over this configuration if desired. Above is an example of how a basic Thread Group mightRead More →

Continuously Increase Load with the JMeter Arrivals Thread Group

When you want to determine the ultimate load of a system, the JMeter Arrivals Thread Group allows the test designer to set a rate by which the load test will continuously increase requests.  By extension, this component is also useful in certain cases where it is desirable to increase request rates exponentially. In a previous post we outlined the various plugins in the Custom Thread Groups package for JMeter. In addition to the most commonly usedRead More →

Using the JMeter Dummy Sampler

  When designing your JMeter test locally, it is useful to have target endpoints to test against. Depending on your test logic, this may even be a requirement. However, a suitable environment for making these requests is not always available. To avoid generating an unknown number of uncontrolled requests against real endpoints, there  the JMeter Dummy Sampler.  In this brief post, we will show you how to add the Dummy Sampler to your load test andRead More →

JMeter plugins

One of the greatest strengths of JMeter is its extensibility with plugins. You can add a plugin to a JMeter test to perform just about any action you can think of for a load test. We will summarize the abilities of the most popular JMeter plugins in the JMeter Plugin Catalog, giving insight to how the top users of JMeter are constructing their load tests. Thread Groups and Test Architecture Custom Thread Groups – This isRead More →

Random Data in JMeter Performance Tests

In a related post, we discussed how to parameterize your JMeter tests from a CSV source file. In this article we will take things a step further, and show you how to introduce variability into your requests by pulling from your CSV source file to have random data in your JMeter performance tests. Random CSV Data Set Config Plugin Building upon the functionality of the CSV Data Set Config plugin that ships with JMeter, there isRead More →