Mar, 2009 : Gomez Doubles Experience Testing Network

📅 March 9, 2009 - Web application experience management services provider Gomez (gomez.com) has doubled the number of "Last Mile" measurement points on its ExperienceFirst network to 80,000 desktop computers between 162 countries, allowing customers to test and monitor user experiences from end-user desktops around the globe.

According to Gomez's Monday announcement, the Gomez ExperienceFirst network is the largest web application performance testing network that uses "outside-in" monitoring from four critical perspectives from: an end-user desktop computer, Internet backbone nodes, within actual users' web browsers and a virtual test bed of more than 500 browser and operating system combinations.

Testing at the Last Mile, according to the company, exposes how variables like location, consumer-grade ISPs, content delivery networks, connection speeds and computer performance all impact the end-user's web performance. The Gomez Last Mile network creates a "real-world" load that accurately represents their target audience profile, helping businesses test new web applications or features on a global mix of demographic locations, ISPs and connection speeds, ironing out any performance wrinkles before it launches.

"Web performance monitoring is as much an art as a science," Tier1 Research vice president and research director Daniel Golding said in a statement. "Having the right mix of end-users and backbone test stations, as well as browsers and operating systems has become a balancing act in a time of increasing globalization and platform differentiation. Providers of Internet applications are looking for a sophisticated approach to application performance and user experience issues - a few nodes on a single backbone provider just won't cut it in today's complex environment."

In order to build its Last Mile network, Gomez welcomes volunteers whose consumer-grade computers execute web performance tests on its customers' websites during their unused processing cycles.

"To succeed on the web today, you have to measure website performance from as close to your customers as possible," Gomez performance strategies vice president Matt Poepsel said in a statement. "With the Gomez Last Mile, you get more insight about the web experience you are really delivering to users, whether they are in your back yard or on another continent."

In September 2008, Gomez added support for Google's Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 browsers for its cross-browser, performance testing environment.