Help with load testing a custom protocol over TCP

Questions & Help Questions
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1

Hello,

I have an Elixir backend that implements a custom protocol over TCP. I want to load test the backend and assess the performance of my server.

I came across Tsung and Chaperon and I have the following issues:

  1. Tsung allows publishing raw data over TCP but the data field is not dynamic
  2. Chaperon is for HTTP/Websocket

I was a user of Gatling and I liked it as it gave the ability to execute arbitrary code for every virtual user of the load test session.

Are there any such frameworks for Elixir lang that allow the load test to be written in Elixir and have good features that Gatling / K6 provides? ex: configuring the RPS, max concurrent users, ramp up, ramp down duration ..etc

Thanks

2

I would defintely take look at the following package:

3

Thanks, but these do not address the the main concern, writing Load Tests for non HTTP services. elixir-k6 seems to be a thin wrapper on top of K6, which doesn’t support custom protocol testing out of the box.

4

Yes, Elixir-K6 is meant to be a thin wrapper because implementer wants to leverage the main K6 project as much as possible. If you’re looking to load test custom protocols over TCP, then you may want to consider building your own load tester by leveraging one of the many AI tools out there because Elixir has some great foundational components. However, if the main K6 project, Gatling, or other have all the features that you require for your load testing objectives, I would simply use them instead of investing too much time in trying to find or build an Elixir equivalent project unless that’s the overall goal of your project.

5

Yes, I’ve started writing a minimal framework that mimics few of the features of K6 and Gatling, and fixes some issues I’ve faced while writing load tests (for example, running an LT with a fixed dataset of inputs a fixed number of times. Gatling doesn’t allow this out of the box). I will share it with the community after I’m finished with testing all the features.

6

I wrote a minimal framework that addresses all my concerns. It’s called Typhoon. It looks quite similar to Chaperon but allows the user to write more complex load profiles. It may be well worth it to contribute to Chaperon but the project seems to be feature complete and there’s no responses from maintainers on issues/PRs.