Load testing consumer websites

Question

I am looking to load test a consumer website. I have tried using JMeter. However, in that case, all the requests originate from one machine. What I really want is to simulate real users across the country some on low speed dialup connections and others on highspeed.

What are the best practices to follow in such a scenario?

Answer 1

JMeter supports distributed testing - so if you're already comfortable with it as a tool, you can use it to power these distributed requests from an arbitrary number of machines, too.

Note that all machines run the exact same test plan, so either your plan should have some random selection of fast/slow environments, or you may be able to select which profile to use based on some system properties.

Answer 2

You might want to consider using a 3rd party service such as Load Impact.