curl-loader is an open-source software performance testing tool.
This C-based tool is developed and maintained by Dr. Robert Iakobashvili and Michael Moser.
Features curl-loader is capable of simulating application behavior of hundreds of thousands of HTTP/HTTPS and FTP/FTPS clients, each with its own source IP-address. In contrast to other tools, curl-loader uses real client protocol stacks, namely, HTTP and FTP stacks of libcurl and TLS/SSL of openSSL, and simulates user behavior with support for login and authentication flavors.
It can run up to 2,500–100,000 and more virtual loading clients from a single curl-loader process. The actual number of virtual clients may be several times higher, limited mainly by memory availability. Each virtual client loads traffic from its "personal" source IP-address, or from the "common" IP-address shared by all clients, or from IP-addresses shared by some clients where a limited set of shared IP-addresses can be used by a batch of clients.
Major features:
Rampup of the virtual clients number at loading start in either automatic or manual mode; IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and URIs; HTTP 1.1. GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, HEAD including file upload operations; HTTP user authentication login with POST or GET+POST methods. Unique configurable username and password for each virtual client as well as configurable posted string (post-forms) are the options. Another option is loading of users with credentials from a tokens text file; HTTP POST/GET forms with up to 16 tokens filled from a tokens text file; HTTP user logoff with POST, GET+POST, or GET (cookies); POST logoff with configurable posted string (post-forms); HTTP multipart form data POST-ing as in RFC1867; HTTP Web and Proxy Authentication (HTTP 401 and 407 responses) with Basic, Digest (RFC2617) and NTLM; HTTP 3xx redirections with unlimited number of redirections; HTTP cookies and DNS caches; FTP passive and active, FTP upload; Full customization of client request HTTP/FTP headers; Transfer limit rate for each client download or upload operation on a per url bases; URL fetching probability; TCP connections reuse or re-establishment on a per URL bases; Unlimited configurable number of URLs. Mixing of HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and FTPS urls in a single batch (test plan) configuration; Connection establishment timers for each URL; URL completion timers monitoring and enforcement for each client; Inter/after URL "sleeping" timers, including random timers taken from a configurable interval; Logfile with tracing activities for each virtual client; Logging of responses (headers and bodies) to files; Pre-cooked batch configuration (test plan) examples; Load Status at console and with output to file; Status and statistics for each virtual client which are logged to file;
The goal of curl-loader is to deliver an open-source software performance testing client-side solution as an alternative to Spirent Avalanche and IXIA IxLoad. Curl-loader is normally paired with nginx or Apache web server as the server-side.
See also Software performance testing Performance Engineering Software testing
References
External links