PERFORMANCE AND RATE LIMITING TESTING OF AN ACADEMIC INFORMATION SYSTEM USING THE K6 TESTING TOOL: A CASE STUDY OF POLITEKNIK XYZ

Abstract

Ensuring the reliability of the Academic Information System (SIAKAD) in handling user access loads requires rigorous performance testing. This study examines response time, throughput, and error rate on the SIAKAD website of Politeknik XYZ using k6, while also identifying the rate-limiting mechanism that affects testing validity. The methodology comprised four stages: test environment planning, scenario planning, execution, and data interpretation and analysis. A step-ladder calibration approach was employed to determine the Maximum Safe Rate (MSR) before conducting four standard load scenarios, namely Smoke, Load, Stress, and Break-point Test, each proportionally scaled to the MSR. The findings indicate that the system's MSR is 2 requests per second, achieving a 0% error rate and a median response time below 100 milliseconds. Request rejections began occurring consistently within the 3.0–3.8 requests-per-second range, with uniform rejection responses suggesting that they originate from the Web Application Firewall (WAF) or reverse proxy layer rather than the backend application itself. These results demonstrate that request-rate-based calibration provides a more representative approach than the conventional virtual-user scheme for generating valid and reproducible performance testing data.