Testing a chat module for load and consistency

Question

A little background - We have a native mobile app- Android and iOS, which has a separate chat module. This chat module has text, video and audio cat facility - very much like WhatsApp.

The video/audio chat uses WebSocket protocol for communication. We are using TokBox's OpenTok platform to implement this functionality.

My question revolves around testing testing the consistency for this chat module and the OpenTok implementation . By consistency, I mean, I want to measure/check how many times user1 and user2 were not able to connect or how many times user1 successfully called but user2 was not able to connect or was not even able to receive the call.

I had a detailed discussion and research on this but I'm unable to come to a good tool or a process on how to measure this. Is this something we can do as a part of load testing [which can be done via Jmeter's WebSocket plugin . ] or is this something that we should check on a network and packet level.

A google group discussion thread, mentions some KPI's for a chat server, but are these applicable here?

On a unit level, I see that Autobahn's test suite to be somewhat helpful, but I'm not sure if it can scaled up for an integration or e2e level.

Answer 1

I would recommend sticking to one of the following load testing tools:

1. Gatling tool which have WebSocket Testing Capabilities. You will need to write your tests using Scala-based DSL.

2. Apache JMeter tool. Out of box JMeter doesn't support WebSockets testing, however you can use i.e. WebSocket Samplers by Peter Doornbosch plugin. The plugin can be installed using JMeter Plugins Manager