JMeter: How is it possible to load test live streaming videos which wont be available during load testing

Question

First I would like to know that lets say, there is live football match on 20th oct, 2018 and we have to load test live streaming of same match. Obviosuly, live will be available on date mentioned but how would I test for the live video streaming which wont be available before mentioned date?

Answer 1

You will need to set up streaming of another match or any other video content of similar length/resolutions to check whether your environment is ready to server the stream to anticipated number of consumers without any hardware/software/networking issues.

For example previous match streaming results can be used for test purposes, I would recommend approaching it as follows:

1. Set up monitoring of all your infrastructure (availability of servers/services, resource availability, CPU, RAM, etc. usage). If you don't have an APM tool in place you can consider using JMeter PerfMon Plugin for this
2. Create a JMeter Test Plan which will represent a real user consuming the stream. Depending on format(s) of stream delivery you will need to either go for JMeter HLS Plugin or implement your test using one of the approaches described in the Load Testing Video Streaming with JMeter: Learn How article
3. Parameterise your test to represent variety of users requesting streams of different resolution/bandwidth, probably even using different network types
4. Run your test, analyse results using JMeter's HTML Reporting Dashboard, raise issues if any, etc.