How to carry out a load test to download files from the server?

Question

Highload

Good afternoon!
The question is as follows:
1. There is a server
2. It has a rather large file (400 mb)
3. You need to check how the server will behave if 50-150 people start to merge from it at once.
Are there any special services for checking the load?
Who ever faced such problems and how they solved them?
The “ab -n” launch option is not entirely suitable, as it does not allow you to fully emulate different users. In my understanding, a mini botnet for 50 machines is ideal for such purposes, but I'm afraid this form of test is a bit illegal, so I'm looking for other ways.

Answer 1

And if you hang a script on the server that gives the same file for download, but with different names (a random set of alphanumerics), and set ab with competitive requests.
I can be wrong, but in this case, the provider's cache will not play a role.

Answer 2

And if you run ab like this:
ab -n150 -c50
-c concurrency
Number of multiple requests to perform at a time. Default is one request at a time.
-n requests
Number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session. The default is to just perform a single request which usually leads to non-representative benchmarking results.

Answer 3

What is wrong with this file that you need to test loading it? Mathematics (channel speed / number of concurrent users) will help you determine the download speed. In determining the speed of the channel - some kind of network benchmark. Only one rule will help in determining the behavior of the system - do not hire idiots for this business , do not use apache and give it from disk, not by script. Look like that's it.