Stress test tools recommendation

[egarnel]

I have Pfsense 1.0.1 installed on a server and was wondering if there are any recommended stress testing tools I could use to place a load on it.
Currently, we average @ 20-30 users/day. In Late January thru March, that average will be between 100-200 and will peak @ 700 -800 users a day.

The main server is a Cisco BBSM 5.3 server (IBM hardware)
CPU 3.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4, 800 MHz FSB, 2 MB cache
System Memory 512 MB
HDD 80 GB SATA
4 1000/100/10 nics
all nics are connected at 1000/full

The network is set up with routing policies that forward only ports 80, 443, and 8000 to the portal server. All other traffic is forwarded out a pair of Cisco 525 PIX firewalls running active/active. It is set up this way as a workaround for multiple vpn clients on the wireless network behind the portal/PIX. The clients are guests on our network and have their own computers and make various vpn & other connections back to where ever they need to…  The wifi network is a 16 bit address space with dhcp space split between two dhcp servers

Right now, the portal server is averaging less than 1 % cpu and the table size hovers @100/10000.  I realize that I have a lot of room to grow before I max out, but I would like to know what my limits are before the client load hits. So I would like to run a series of tests on the portal beforehand.

Thanks,

Eric.

[sullrich]

Yes, lease or rent a smart-bits unit.