Why Residential Proxies Are Best for Load Testing

If you’re concerned about how your network will perform under pressure, there’s no better way to know for sure than load testing with proxies. This will give you the confidence you need to ensure that your system will stay up and running, no matter what gets thrown its way.‌

But why do you put a system under a load when you are testing for errors? And does it matter what types of load testing you do or which proxies you use?‌

What Is Load Testing in Software Testing?

Load testing is essentially a kind of performance test in which a load generator sends and receives user requests from a target system to see how well it handles a little pressure. This is different from actual stress testing, wherein the point is to see how much load a server can handle before it fails. Load testing is not about bringing the system anywhere near failure. It’s merely a way of approximating the kind of daily use you would expect to see during normal business operations.‌

Load testing is a valuable source of data that can be used to optimize a system or identify any problems before they escalate. Server infrastructure and hardware that performs well enough under normal conditions can nevertheless fail when placed under even moderate load—if you need a software patch or a total system overhaul, it’s better to know that before they cause a crisis and not after.‌

Load testing should simulate as closely as possible the kind of traffic you intend to use during your operations, using the same if not more amount of user sessions as you ordinarily would. Residential proxies that emulate organic traffic and are easier to disguise from IP blockers should be incorporated into your load testing procedures to maximize the value of the data you receive.‌

Why Do You Place a System Under a Load When You Are Testing for Errors?

One of the great dangers your company faces is network downtime. It’s not just about lost productivity and efficiency. In addition to the cost of getting your network back up and running after a failure—which isn’t inconsiderable—there’s also lost revenue from the hours you were down. That system failure can also cause some angry customers, some of whom might not come back to you. All told, the average cost of network downtime across the IT industry is a staggering $5,600 per minute.‌

The purpose of load testing is to never let things escalate to that point. Your network health is the meat and potatoes of your company and needs to be optimized to sustain different traffic loads. How will you know, for example, if the dynamic new themes or videos you’ve embedded into your website will be able to handle elevated internet traffic in the future?‌

IP Load Testing for SEO Health

Load testing also has important implications for search engine optimization. It’s well-known that site performance is part of the metric Google uses to index its SEO Rankings. Faster is better. Websites with three-second page load times have 32% higher bounce rates than sites with one-second page load times.‌

That’s why performance is so important. If your server or website slows to a crawl the moment you start attracting any serious traffic, a huge proportion of those people will simply bounce and take their business elsewhere. That’s essentially money left on the table that could have been yours had you tested your company’s network health at load before you needed it.‌

How to Do Load Testing the Right Way With Proxies

‌You’ll need to first define what good performance means to you, and that will determine what load testing tools you use. You can then determine a range of possible scenarios that your system might encounter in both ordinary or extraordinary working environments, using a baseline fitted to your needs.‌

At this juncture you will want a high performance proxy for load testing. Residential proxies are best for that, especially for HTTPS load testing with proxy, but the most important thing is that you configure your metrics accordingly, schedule the number of virtual connections needed for the scenario, and run the test.‌

Proxies are necessary for ensuring an accurate test. The use of proxies will let you create a diversity of testing environments, such as introducing virtual connections from different kinds of browsers, different mobile devices, computers located in different parts of the world, and so on. Devise new and increasingly challenging scenarios to further test your system so that you’re prepared for anything.‌

Residential Proxies: The Best High Performance Proxy for Load Testing‌

There’s an understandable temptation in load testing to save your money and use data center IP proxies to run the test. While that can work, data center IPs won’t necessarily emulate real-world operations quite so well as residential proxies can.‌

As much as possible, you want IP addresses that look like they’re from individual users from actual residences because that you would see in real life. Those residential proxies will give your system a chance to handle many different requests from many different locations. This allows you to identify beforehand whatever technical issues your system might have acknowledging a given request, so if you ever go viral, you’ll be ready for it.‌

Are you concerned about how well your network will handle a sudden spike in activity? The nice thing about using residential proxies for load testing is that they’re all actual IP addresses from real devices. The question then becomes where to source residential IP proxies for load testing in the first place.‌

Rayobyte’s rotating residential IP addresses are practically tailor made for all your load testing needs. We make sure to ethically source our residential IPs and vet them for reliability and authority, meaning your system can perform more authentic load testing while still being produced from bans and downtime. No matter the scope of your project, our team is willing to work with you—your reputation is as important to us as it is to you. Learn more about our services and start incorporating proxies into your load testing today.

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