Load Testing vs. Stress Testing
A load test is a planned test to perform a specified number of requests to a system in order to test the functionality of the system under specific levels of simultaneous requests. A load test ensures that a web system is capable of handling an expected volume of traffic, and therefore is sometimes referred to as volume testing. The goal of a load test is to prove that a system can handle the expected volume with minimal to acceptable performance degradation. The threshold of acceptable performance degradation must be defined by the testers as some value considered acceptable to the end user so that users will not bounce from the site.
