LoadRunner TruClient - How to measure page response time properly? - performance

Question for LoadRunner TruClient, how to measure page load time properly?
Right now I'm thinking the only way to do is to have 1) Click a link event 2) Verify object show up on the next page.
But if I put the transaction around 1)+2), the response time is really long. If I put the transaction around 2), the response time is really short. I feel it's not accurate measurement of page load time in both ways. What's the proper way to measure page load time? What should I set as the End Event for both steps?

If you are trying to measure client load on the front end the place to begin is in the developer tools long before you get to any sort of multi-user performance test, for any issue you find in the last 100 yards before deployment will have zero chance of going through the page architecture changes required to affect client performance
Example, from Google Chrome, developer tools

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Why is JMeter Result is different to User Experience Result?

We are currently conducting performance tests on both web apps that we have, one is running within a private network and the other is accessible for all. For both apps, a single page-load of the landing page or initial page only takes between 2-3 seconds on a user POV, but when we use blaze and JMeter, the results are between 15-20 seconds. Am I missing something? The 15-20 seconds result came from the Loadtime/Sample Time in JMeter and in Elapsed column if extracted to .csv. Please help as I'm stuck.
We have tried conducting tests on multiple PCs within the office premises along with a PC remotely accessed on another site and we still get the same results. The number of thread and ramp-up period is both set to 1 to imitate a single user only.
Where a delta exists, it is certain to mean that two different items are being timed. It would help to understand on your front end are you timing to a standard metric, such as w3c domComplete, time to interactive, first contentful paint, some other location, and then compare where this comes into play on the drilldown on the performance tab of chrome. Odds are that there is a lot occuring that is not visible that is being captured by Jmeter.
You might also look for other threads on here on how jmeter operates as compared to a "real browser" There are differences which could come into play affecting your page comparisons, particularly if you have dozens/hundreds of elements that need to be downloaded to complete your page. Also, pay attention to third party components where you do not have permission to test their servers.
I can think of 2 possible causees:
Clear your browser history, especially browser cache. It might be the case you're getting HTTP Status 304 for all requests in browser because responses are being returned from the browser cache and no actual requests are being made while JMeter always uses "clean" session.
Pay attention to Connect Time and Latency metrics as it might be the case the server response time is low but the time for network packets to travel back and forth is very high.
Connect Time. JMeter measures the time it took to establish the connection, including SSL handshake. Note that connect time is not automatically subtracted from latency. In case of connection error, the metric will be equal to the time it took to face the error, for example in case of Timeout, it should be equal to connection timeout.
Latency. JMeter measures the latency from just before sending the request to just after the first response has been received. Thus the time includes all the processing needed to assemble the request as well as assembling the first part of the response, which in general will be longer than one byte. Protocol analysers (such as Wireshark) measure the time when bytes are actually sent/received over the interface. The JMeter time should be closer to that which is experienced by a browser or other application client.
So basically "Elapsed time = Connect Time + Latency + Server Processing Time"
In general given:
the same machine
clean browser session
and JMeter configured to behave like a real browser
you should get similar or equal timings for the same page

Visual Studio Load Test request completion and think time

I'm using load test in Visual Studio to test our web api services. But to my surprise I can't seem to test what I want to. Actually I have a single url in my .webtest file and try to send the same url time and again to see what is the avg. response time.
Here are the details
1.I use constant load of 1 user
2.Test duration of 1 hour
3.Think time of 10 seconds (not the think time between iterations)
4.The avg. response time that I get is 1.5 seconds
5.So the avg. test time comes out to be 11.5 seconds
6.Requests/sec are 0.088
7.And I'm using Sequential Test Order among 4 types of different tests
So these figures are making me think that every time a virtual user sends a request besides the specified think time it waits for the request to complete before he sends a new one (request). Thus technically the total think time becomes
Total think time = think time specified + avg. response time
But I don't want the user to wait for an already sent request to come back and then send a new one after a specified think time. I need to configure the load test in such a way that if the think time is 10 seconds then the user should send next request after every 10 seconds without waiting the first one to come back then think for another 10 seconds and then send a new request (hence making the total think time to 11.5 seconds in my case as mentioned above). And no matter what type of test I choose among 4 different types Visual Studio is always forcing the virtual user to wait for the completion of the request then add specified think time and then send a new one.
I know what Visual Studio load test is doing is more of a practical approach where the user sends the request wait till it comes back then think or interact with the website and then sends a new one.
Any help or suggestion would be appreciated towards what I'm trying to achieve.
In the properties of the scenario, set the "Test mix type" to be "Test mix based on user pace" and set the "Tests per user per hour" as appropriate. See here.
The suggestion in the question that:
Total think time = think time specified + avg. response time
is erroneous. To my mind adding the values does not provide a useful result. The two values on the right are as stated. Think time simulates the time a user spends reading the page, deciding what to do next and typing/clicking/etc their response. Response time is the "turn around" time between sending a request and getting the response. Adding them does not increase the think time in any sense, it just makes the total duration for handing the request in this specific test. Another test might make the same request with a different think time. Note that many web pages cause more than one request and response to be issued; JavaScript and other allow web pages to do many clever things.

Does JMeter show the correct average response time for the first page it hits for many virtual users?

I'm load testing a system with 500 virtual users. I've kept the "Ramp-Up period (in seconds)" option to zero. So, what I understand, JMeter will hit the system with 500 virtual users all at the same time. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
Now, the summary report shows the average response time for the first page is ~100 seconds!. Which is more than a minute and a half of wait time. But while the JMeter is running, I manually went to the same page/url using a browser and didn't have to wait for that long. It was not even close, the page response was almost immediate for me.
My question is: is there any known issue for the average response time of the first page? Is it JMeter which is taking long to trigger that many users?
Thanks in advance.
--Ishtiaque
There is no issue in Jmeter related to first page response time.
Summary Report shows all response time details in Milliseconds, the value "100" seconds have you converted milliseconds to seconds?
Also in order to make sure that 500 users hit concurrently, use Synchronizing Timer.
Hope this will help.
While the response times will be accurate, you need to consider the affect of starting so many threads at once on both your server and your client.
500 threads to start at once is not insignificant n the client. If your server has the connections, it will start 500 threads as well.
Ramping over a period of time is more realistic loadwise, but still not really indicative of server capability until the threads have all started and settled in.
Databases can also require a settling in period which can affect response times.
Alternative to ramping is introducing a random wait at the start of each thread before firing the first sample. You can then choose not to ramp over time, but still expect resources on the client to suddenly come under load and change the settings if you hit limits. This will make the entire run much more realistic of typical behaviour. However, you need to determine if your use cases are typical.
Although the heap size is increased, i notice there is still longer time as compared to actual response time. Later i realised it was the probe effect (the extra time a tool generates due to test execution)

does testing a website through JMeter actually overload the main server

I am using to test my web server https://buyandbrag.in .
I have tested it for 100 users. But the main server is not showing like it is crowded or not.
I want to know whether it is really pressuring the main server(a cloud server I am using).Or just use the client resourse where the tool is installed.
Yes as mentioned you should be monitoring both servers to see how they handle the load. The simplest way to do this is with TOP (if your server OS is *NIX) also you should be watching the network activity i.e. Bandwidth, connection status (time wait, close wait and so on).
Also if your using apache keep an eye on the logs you should see the requests being logged there
Good luck with the tests
I want to know "how many users my website can handele ?",when I tested with 50 threads ,the cpu usage of my server increased but not the connections log(It showed just 2 connections).also the bandwidth usage is not that much
Firstly what connections are you referring to? Apache, DB etc?
Secondly if you want to see how many users your current setup can hand you need to create a profile or traffic model of what an average user will do on your site.
For example:
Say 90% of the time they will search for something
5% of the time they will purchase x
5% of the time they login.
Once you have your "Traffic Model" defined, implement it in jMeter then start increasing your load in increments i.e. running your load test for 10mins with x users, after 10mins increment that number and so on until you find your breaking point.
If you graph your responses you should see two main things:
1) The optimum response time / number of users before the service degrades
2) The tipping point i.e. at what point you start returning 503's etc
Now you'll have enough data to scale your site or to start making performance improvements from a code point of view.

How does Chartbeat measure Server Load Time?

It seems that Chartbeat is reporting my Server Load Time incorrectly.
Does anyone know how Chartbeat measures this data so I can make this metric more accurate?
chartbeat server load time is a measure of how long time it takes to load the HTML from your server, from servers on the east coast US.
http://chartbeat.com/faq/
From Chartbeat: How fast is my site? What information do I get from Load Times?
User Page load
...
It is calculated by timing the two pieces of Chartbeat javascript on the site. This
means it includes all the Javascript and embedded items you have on the page and tells
you how long it's taking to load on the user's browser.
If the load times look incorrect, check to make sure that you have:
<script type="text/javascript">var _sf_startpt=(new Date()).getTime()</script>
In the head of your page before loading your other resources, and the other code they give you just before the body closes.

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