Using the siege load testing tool, it sends a number of transactions to a server.
The output is typically something like:
** SIEGE 4.0.4
** Preparing 1 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Transactions: 10 hits
Availability: 100.00 %
Elapsed time: 14.31 secs
Data transferred: 0.09 MB
Response time: 1.43 secs
Transaction rate: 0.70 trans/sec
Throughput: 0.01 MB/sec
Concurrency: 1.00
Successful transactions: 10
Failed transactions: 0
Longest transaction: 4.54
Shortest transaction: 0.00
Sometimes in testing I see that the number of successful transactions plus the number of failed transactions does not equal the total number of transactions (e.g. 1000 transactions, 992 successful, 4 failed). Sometimes the total is lower, sometimes the total is higher (e.g. 1000 transactions, 998 success, 4 fail). What does this mean? What happened to these non-success and non-fail transactions?