NSTL Announces Availability of New E-commerce Scalability Testing FacilityDesigned for Load Testing and Performance Tuning of Enterprise E-commerce ApplicationsPRNewswire NSTL, Inc., CMP Media's (NASDAQ: CMPX) independent IT testing unit, today announced the availability of a new industry resource, the NSTL E-commerce Scalability Test Lab. The lab, based at the NSTL testing facilities in Conshohocken, Pa., is open to vendors and corporate IT departments to test the performance and scalability of the hardware, application server software and development tools that form the basis for building e-commerce applications. NSTL also announced the results of the Windows Distributed interNet Application (Windows DNA) scalability study, sponsored by Microsoft Corp., the first vendor to use the new testing facility. Microsoft commissioned NSTL to test a reference Windows DNA application built using the Visual Studio development system. Results of the testing were provided at Microsoft's annual Tech-Ed developer event being held in Dallas, now through May 27, and the preliminary report has been released on the NSTL web site at http://www.nstl.com/. NSTL has openly published all testing methodology and detailed results of this independently conducted study, and Microsoft has published the source code for the reference application tested at the facility. "The lab should be viewed by the industry as an open resource to thoroughly test and demonstrate the functionality, scalability and performance of a wide variety of e-commerce solutions," said Lloyd Holder, NSTL director of testing. "IT managers need objective data that can form the basis for making solid technology decisions, and the new facility furthers that interest by providing an open, independent, and impartial venue for testing, with objective and informative published testing results." "NSTL's Scalability Study has enabled us to measure the scalability and report on specific metrics for Web application development that will be very useful for our customers using the Windows DNS development model," said Jigish Avalani, Windows DNA group product manager, Microsoft Corp. "We are pleased to now make the results and source code from our test available to all developers, which can be found on the new VS Solutions Site." URL is http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/solutions.asp. NSTL teamed with Compaq Computer Corp. and RSW Software to establish the lab. NSTL used Compaq servers and RSW's e-LOAD testing tool. NSTL representatives are available to discuss details of the new facility at Booth 264 at the Microsoft Tech-Ed event. The scalability lab setup features over 75 powerful client workstations and top-of-the-line networking equipment, and is capable of testing the performance and scalability of an end-to-end solution, not just individual components. The facility is capable of generating a load of over 10,000 concurrent Web clients, with automatic electronic data capture of a wide variety of statistics, such as per-page user response times, web interactions per second, transaction error rates, and network traffic. The lab is capable of generating a realistic load consisting of a mix of user profiles, simultaneously exercising different portions of a dynamic Web application based on real-world Web usage patterns. The lab is focused on reporting empirical performance metrics of e-commerce products subjected to massive user load, versus projecting results based on smaller load tests. This approach ensures vendors and customers that the data reported provides an accurate depiction of the actual performance of the tested products. About NSTL NSTL, a division of CMP Media, was established in 1983 as the world's first independent organization dedicated exclusively to testing the functionality, usability and performance of hardware and software. Its suburban Philadelphia facility has 16 laboratories and a staff of highly skilled test engineers. In addition to its U.S. facility, NSTL has labs in Canada, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Argentina, the UK and Israel. Its clients include IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Canon, Casio, Compaq, Dell and HP. NSTL's Web site is http://www.nstl.com/. CMP Media Inc. (NASDAQ: CMPX) is the leading high-tech media company providing essential information and marketing services to the entire technology spectrum -- the builders, sellers and users of technology worldwide. With its portfolio of newspapers, magazines, custom publishing, Internet products, research, consulting and conferences, CMP is uniquely positioned to offer marketers comprehensive, integrated solutions tailored to meet their individual needs. Online editions of the company's print publications, along with products and services created exclusively for the Internet, can be found on CMPnet at http://www.CMPnet.com. SOURCE: CMP Media Inc. Contact: Barry J. Zusman, 516-562-7040, bzusman@cmp.com, or Alexandra Website: http://www.nstl.com/ Website: http://www.cmpnet.com/ Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/181993.html or fax, |