I like HTTPerf. It’s a simply tool for a simply job: start HTTP calls and benchmark a remote system. But the CLI syntax for making it work with proxies is … cumbersome. So, here’s how to get it to work.
Say you want to benchmark “www.test.com ” and you have a proxy running on your localhost port 8118.
$ httperf --server 127.0.0.1 \ --port 8118 \ --uri=http://www.test.com/page.html \ --print-reply=header \ --print-request=header \ --debug 3 \ --no-host-hdr \ --add-header "Host: www.test.com"
There’s some debug information included above to show you what’s happening. Most importantly, the –no-host-hdr option prevents HTTPerf from adding it’s own Host: header, so you can use –add-header to add your own Host: header into the request.
The short version would be this.
$ httperf --server 127.0.0.1 \ --port 8118 \ --uri=http://www.test.com/page.html \ --no-host-hdr \ --add-header "Host: www.test.com"