Rethink Server Load Balancer Testing

A methodology to measure the performance, security and stability of server load balancers under real-world network conditions

 

Server load balancers have become an integral piece of networking equipment, allowing for load balancing, application acceleration and high availability of services. Adoption of virtualization and cloud computing, as well as the overall increase of network load, has placed server load balancers in a critical juncture of any cyber infrastructure. Assessment of these critical devices must shift towards examining them under realistic network simulation including:

  • Measuring the number of TCP connections per second the load balancer is able to handle provides a baseline test of the device’s performance capabilities.
  • Determining the overall bandwidth the load balancer can support through measuring the number of HTTP/HTTPS connections per second the device can handle.
  • Emulating blended application traffic to validate the load balancer can handle a true network scenario.
  • Simulating dynamic pages and image files to validate HTTP Caching performance.
  • Confirming the load balancer can handle malformed packets or errors with the packet through application fuzzing.
  • Testing RFCs 793, 1945, 2616, 2818, and 3501.
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