Tips for Performance Testing Behind a Firewall

Today, digital demands are becoming increasingly more complex to execute. The software development experience is growing vaster to keep up with the needs of today’s consumer.

As software development capabilities keep expanding, the needs for more advanced performance testing are growing as well. Add to that the need for testers to execute firewall performance testing, and the demand is not a small one.

One of the biggest struggles that many testers face when running tests from a cloud environment is firewall performance testing or figuring out how to test behind their company’s firewall.

But there are ways to conduct performance tests without conflicting with a firewall.

In this blog, we will give an overview of how testing behind a firewall can be streamlined with dedicated IPs, geolocation, whitelisting, and SSO. 

What is Firewall Performance Testing?

Firewall performance testing is considered a key part of external network penetration testing. Firewall testing is one of the most important types of network tests that can be conducted as firewalls represent the first line of defense against outside threats. Luckily, BlazeMeter has 3 easy solutions that should cover any company’s security needs!

BlazeMeter Solutions for Easy Firewall Performance Testing

These solutions from BlazeMeter give you options to implement firewall performance testing in your environment. These solutions can help solve one of the biggest struggles that software performance testing engineers face when running tests from a cloud environment behind the company's firewall.

Whitelisting IP Addresses

Whitelisting is BlazeMeter's free solution for getting around this issue.  It is quick and easy to implement, but does offer some security drawbacks.

What is Whitelisting?

Whitelisting is the process of creating lists of trusted IP addresses or IP ranges that will allow requests made from those IPs through your corporate firewall.

Most corporate firewalls are configured to block most or all incoming traffic.  This makes testing those applications from a cloud platform impossible without a workaround.  Through whitelisting, your network team can configure your firewall rules to allow requests coming from BlazeMeter IP addresses through the firewall, which will enable you to test from our Platform.

This handy guide will walk you through how to obtain our IP addresses. Once you have those IPs/IP Ranges whitelisted, you’ll be ready to begin firewall performance testing.

Dedicated IPs

What are Dedicated IPs?

Dedicated IPs are single IPs that you can use with your test runs at your leisure. These IPs belong to your account and will not be used by any other BlazeMeter users.

Many of our more security-conscious customers have network security policies that don’t allow for the whitelisting of large amounts of IPs or IP ranges.  In these cases, a more precise solution is required.  This is where Dedicated IPs come in.  They are singular IPs that can be run with any tests on your account.  Once purchased, the IPs can be assigned to the location of your choosing and they will be provisioned into your account in short order.

You can assign dedicated IPs to your BlazeMeter engines.  Each IP address belongs to a specific region, for instance, US East (Virginia), EU West (London), or any other Google Cloud location. 

Dedicated IPs are only available for Enterprise plans. For more details, please contact your BlazeMeter account manager. We recommend that you purchase one IP address for every engine on your plan.

Examples:

• 20 engines plan = 20 IPs
• 50 engines plan = 50 IPs
• 100 engine plan = 100 IPs

If you are interested in purchasing Dedicated IP’s, then please take a look at this guide.

On-Premise Testing with Private Locations

On-Premise testing is BlazeMeter’s most secure option for testing with our platform and is utilized by many of our clients.  As such, this option will require setup from the user side and necessitates a qualifying plan before they can be implemented.

Private locations are the on-premise solution when you need to test applications or create Mock Services behind a firewall. To learn more about the off-premise architecture, see Cloud vs Private Location.

With this service, you do not need to make incoming requests. You only install our agent on your on-premise servers. The agent gives your servers a "heartbeat" by sending outgoing requests to BlazeMeter to check if any tests started for the Private location. If any test started, BlazeMeter responds with instructions for these servers. Your load generators then send traffic to your application while sending data back to BlazeMeter, so you have full access to our real-time reporting.

Private locations are self-service machines and require you to maintain and upkeep them on a regular basis.

• Private Location: Your on-premise environment, formerly known as a 'harbor.'
• Agent: Any server on which you install our agent is an agent within a Private location. These are your load generators. Formerly known as a 'ship.'

For more information about BlazeMeter’s On-Premise solution, we recommend reading this guide.

Geolocation Testing

What is Geolocation Testing?

Geolocation testing software means testing against IPs of various geographical locations. Some examples of geolocation that benefit an application include notifications, performance, checking notifications, and more.

An app may load successfully from one location but may not load as desired from a different location. An app will also serve up specific content such as pop-up messages or the like based on a user’s location. That is why it is imperative to test against all potential scenarios for users with geolocation testing.  

Geolocation testing is easy with a commercial cloud solution like Perfecto. Simply access the device you need and simulate your user behavior by entering the location you wish to test.    

By adding IP geolocation into your web and mobile tests, you can validate scenarios like languages, currencies, time zones, and more. These automated tests may be coupled with other testing paradigms like end-to-end regression to mimic a complete test environment in a single location.

Single Sign-On (SSO) Testing

What is SSO Testing?

SSO testing is the method of validating security, performance, and functionality of a SSO system to ensure users can log in with a password and single ID to access multiple applications or services. SSO testing is crucial for providing a seamless and secure UX across connected platforms.

SSO testing requires several different types of testing including performance testing, security testing, functional testing, and compatibility testing. Components of SSO that should be tested using those tests are:

• Session Timeout
• Valid/Invalid Login
• Password Change
• Logout Function
• Network Failure
• User Roles
• Cross-Browser Compatibility
• Account or Password Recovery
• Simultaneous Sessions
• Security Protocols

Bottom Line

Firewall performance testing can be difficult, but it does not have to be.

BlazeMeter has many solutions to help streamline firewall performance testing. You can request a demo to learn more about how BlazeMeter can help solve your testing challenges, or get started testing them yourself for FREE today. 

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