Load, Stress & Spike Testing

Summary

Load testing verifies behavior under expected traffic; stress testing pushes beyond capacity to find the breaking point; spike testing checks how the system handles a sudden, dramatic traffic increase.

• 1Design a load test plan specifying expected concurrent users for a hypothetical system.
• 2Learn the specific goal each test type answers, since they're often confused with each other.
• 3Understand why stress testing intentionally aims to break the system, unlike load testing.