ink - An HTTP Benchmarking Tool

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is one the foundations of the modern Internet. Because HTTP servers may be subject to unexpected periods of high load, developers use HTTP benchmarking utilities to simulate the load generated by users. However, many of these tools do not report performance details at a per-client level, which deprives developers of crucial insights into a server's performance capabilities.

In this work, we present ink, an HTTP benchmarking tool that enables developers to better understand server performance. ink provides developers with a way of visualizing the level of service that each individual client receives. It does this by recording a trace of events for each individual simulated client. We also present a GUI that enables users to explore and visualizing the data that is generated by an HTTP benchmark. Lastly, we present a method for running HTTP benchmarks that uses a set of distributed machines to scale up the achievable load on the benchmarked server.

We evaluate ink by performing a series of case studies to show that ink is both performant and useful. We validate ink's load generation abilities within the context of a single machine and when using a set of distributed machines. ink is shown to be capable of simulating hundreds of thousands of HTTP clients and presenting per-client results through the ink GUI. We also perform a set of HTTP benchmarks where ink is able to highlight performance issues and differences between server implementations. We compare servers like NGINX and Apache and highlight their differences using ink.