Performance testing IPAD/Mobile applicatins

Recently customers are requesting for performance testing IPAD/Mobile applications and I came across such a requirement recently. The challenge is to simulate the traffic and the typical approach to capture traffic using tools like LoadRunner may not work in this case due to the reasons below.

·         Tools like LoadRunner can’t be installed in IPAD/smart phones to record the flow and capture the communication.

·         Network capturing tools like Wireshark and Fiddler can’t be installed in IPAD.

The approach is to route the traffic from IPAD to a hub/router and capturing the communication using network monitoring tools like wireshark.

1)      Hub takes packets sent from one port and transmits (repeats) them to every other port on the device. For example, if a computer on port 1 of a 4-port hub needs to send data to a computer on port 2, the hub sends those packets to ports 1, 2, 3, and 4.  When computer sends data, all computers connected to the hub receive it.  Connect a computer to the hub which has Wireshark or fiddler installed to capture the communication.

2)      Second approach is to connect to a router and allow traffic to go through the proxy.

The below link has the approach followed by my team to capture communication using wireless router and fiddler

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yh2Yi8MBNl0X4ClTZxYAl0iXEOQs8ZeZcJ1Kd4Cldq4/edit#

Finally download the BPC toolkit available in my blog to convert fiddler output to LoadRunner script.

 
Note: HP developed some Mobile apps protocol to test Mobile applications which takes Wireshark network trace as an input to create a script. Purchasing license for this protocol is not required if the above approach is followed

@2011, copyright Vamsidhar Tokala