GoFlood: Distributed Load Testing Tool

Press Release

Ataiva Releases GoFlood: Open Source Load Testing at Enterprise Scale

For immediate release - June 2, 2024

Sub-headline

GoFlood brings enterprise-grade load testing capabilities to development teams of all sizes with a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use open source tool written in Go.

The Problem

Organizations developing web applications, APIs, and online services face a critical challenge: accurately simulating real-world traffic at scale to identify performance bottlenecks before they impact users. Traditional load testing tools often require complex setup, lack flexibility, or come with prohibitive licensing costs for high-volume testing. This leaves many teams with inadequate performance testing, resulting in unexpected outages, poor user experience, and costly emergency fixes when systems fail under real-world load.

The Solution

GoFlood addresses these challenges by providing a high-performance, concurrent HTTP load testing tool that’s both powerful and simple to use. Written in Go for maximum efficiency, GoFlood allows developers to simulate millions of concurrent users with realistic usage patterns and geographic distribution. Its lightweight design and flexible configuration options make it ideal for everything from quick development tests to comprehensive pre-release performance validation, all without the complexity or cost of traditional enterprise load testing solutions.

Community Quote

“GoFlood has transformed how we approach performance testing across our organization,” says Maria Chen, Lead DevOps Engineer at TechScale Solutions. “Before discovering this tool, we were limited by the cost and complexity of commercial load testing platforms. With GoFlood, we’ve been able to implement comprehensive performance testing at every stage of our development pipeline. During our last product launch, we confidently handled 10x our expected traffic because we had thoroughly tested our infrastructure with GoFlood. The best part is that it’s so easy to use that both our QA team and developers run tests regularly without needing specialized expertise.”

How It Works

GoFlood uses Go’s powerful concurrency model to generate precisely controlled load patterns against target systems:

The tool creates thousands of concurrent connections efficiently using Go’s goroutines, allowing it to generate massive traffic volumes even from a single machine. Users can configure the exact concurrency level, gradually increase load to identify breaking points, and set precise test durations to simulate sustained traffic.

GoFlood provides real-time progress reporting during tests, showing elapsed time, remaining time, and requests per second. After completion, it generates comprehensive summary reports with key metrics including total requests, success/failure counts, and detailed timing statistics (minimum, median, maximum response times).

The command-line interface makes it easy to integrate into CI/CD pipelines, while the flexible configuration options allow for complex testing scenarios that accurately model real-world traffic patterns.

Availability

GoFlood is available now as an open source project under the MIT license. Developers can access the source code, documentation, and installation instructions on the GitHub repository .

Get Started Today

Start stress-testing your web applications today with GoFlood and gain valuable insights into your system’s performance and scalability. Visit the GitHub repository to download the tool and contribute to its development.

Frequently Asked Questions

Project Questions

What is GoFlood?
GoFlood is a high-performance, concurrent HTTP load testing tool written in Go. It allows you to simulate real-world traffic scenarios and stress-test your web applications, APIs, and servers by flooding them with a configurable number of concurrent requests. The tool is designed to be simple to use yet powerful enough for enterprise-scale load testing.

Why was GoFlood created?
GoFlood was created to address the gap between simple, limited load testing tools and complex, expensive enterprise solutions. We wanted to provide developers and QA teams with a tool that could generate significant load without requiring specialized expertise or infrastructure. By leveraging Go’s efficient concurrency model, GoFlood delivers enterprise-grade load testing capabilities in an accessible open source package.

What types of systems can I test with GoFlood?
GoFlood can test any HTTP-based system, including:

• Web applications and sites
• REST and GraphQL APIs
• Microservices
• Content delivery networks
• API gateways
• Load balancers
• Serverless functions
• Cloud infrastructure

How does GoFlood compare to other load testing tools?
GoFlood offers several advantages over other tools:

• Simplicity: Easier to use than complex tools like JMeter or Gatling
• Performance: More efficient than Python or Node.js based tools due to Go’s concurrency model
• Scalability: Generates higher load from fewer resources compared to many alternatives
• Flexibility: Simple enough for quick tests but powerful enough for complex scenarios
• Cost: Free and open source with no licensing fees or usage limits

Technical Questions

How does GoFlood generate load?
GoFlood uses Go’s goroutines to create lightweight, concurrent execution threads. This approach allows it to spawn thousands of concurrent connections with minimal resource overhead. Each goroutine manages its own HTTP client, sending requests to the target system according to the configured parameters. The tool carefully manages connection pooling and resource utilization to maximize the load it can generate from a single machine.

What metrics does GoFlood report?
GoFlood provides comprehensive metrics including:

• Total requests completed
• Successful vs. failed requests
• Requests per second (throughput)
• Minimum response time
• Median response time
• Maximum response time
• Error rate and error types
• Test duration and concurrency levels
• Real-time progress during test execution

Can GoFlood simulate realistic user behavior?
Yes, GoFlood includes several features to create more realistic tests:

• Gradual concurrency increases to simulate growing traffic
• Customizable request headers to mimic different clients
• Configurable request timeouts
• Support for HTTP methods beyond GET (POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.)
• Ability to include request bodies for API testing
• Random delays between requests (configurable)

What are the system requirements for running GoFlood?
GoFlood is extremely efficient and can run on modest hardware:

• Any operating system that supports Go (Windows, macOS, Linux)
• Minimal CPU and memory requirements (2 CPU cores and 512MB RAM for basic tests)
• Network connection with sufficient bandwidth for desired test volume
• Go runtime (for building from source) or pre-compiled binary

Implementation Questions

How do I install GoFlood?
You can install GoFlood in several ways:

1. Download pre-compiled binaries from the GitHub releases page
2. Install using Go: go install github.com/ao/goflood@latest
3. Build from source:

   git clone https://github.com/ao/goflood.git
   cd goflood
   go build
   

How do I run a basic load test with GoFlood?
Running a basic test is simple:

goflood -url http://example.com -n 10 -t 1m

This command starts a load test against http://example.com with 10 concurrent connections for 1 minute.

Can I integrate GoFlood into CI/CD pipelines?
Yes, GoFlood is designed for easy integration into continuous integration workflows:

• Command-line interface works well with CI/CD systems
• Exit codes indicate test success/failure based on configurable thresholds
• JSON output option for programmatic parsing of results
• Configurable test parameters via environment variables or config files
• Lightweight execution makes it suitable for running in CI containers

How can I contribute to GoFlood?
Contributions to GoFlood are welcome! You can contribute by:

• Submitting bug reports or feature requests via GitHub issues
• Creating pull requests for code improvements or new features
• Improving documentation
• Sharing examples and use cases
• Helping other users in the community

Community & Support Questions

Where can I get help if I encounter issues with GoFlood?
Support for GoFlood is available through:

• GitHub issues for bug reports and feature requests
• Documentation in the GitHub repository
• Community discussions in the repository’s Discussions section
• Stack Overflow using the “goflood” tag

Is commercial support available for GoFlood?
While GoFlood is primarily community-supported as an open source project, organizations requiring dedicated support can contact Ataiva for consulting services related to load testing, performance optimization, and custom GoFlood implementations.

How can I stay updated on GoFlood developments?
To stay informed about GoFlood updates:

• Watch or star the GitHub repository
• Follow the project maintainers on GitHub
• Join the mailing list (if available)
• Check the releases page for new versions

Can I use GoFlood in commercial projects?
Yes, GoFlood is released under the MIT license, which allows for use in commercial projects. You can freely use, modify, and distribute GoFlood in your commercial applications without licensing fees.

Key Features

Usage

GoFlood is a command-line tool that can be easily integrated into your development and testing workflows. Here’s an example of how to use it:

goflood -url http://example.com -n 10 -t 1m

This command will start a load test against http://example.com with an initial concurrency level of 10, gradually increasing the concurrency by 5 every second, and running for a duration of 1 minute.

You can customize the load test parameters by adjusting the following flags:

• -url: The target URL to test
• -n: The concurrency level (number of concurrent requests)
• -t: The duration for which the load test should run

Use Cases