Browser Synthetics

Browser synthetics refers to using programmatic browser interactions to test a web-based user experience. A ThousandEyes browser synthetics test simulates user interaction with a website or application – helping you understand how employees or customers experience an application, and the impact of underlying network infrastructure and service availability on the user’s experience.

For example, using browser synthetics tests, you can:

• Load a web page and measure the load time for all page elements.

• Visit an online shopping site, search for an item by name, and add it to a shopping cart.

• Visit a streaming media site, load a video, play the first 5 seconds and then pause.

• Log into an office team site behind a firewall and send an email to a few selected individuals using directory lookup.

• Visit a customer portal and download a file, or upload a generated test file.

• Load a page that makes API calls and presents new data to the user in a browser.

You can run browser synthetics tests from ThousandEyes Cloud Agents to monitor a public-facing website, or from Enterprise Agents deployed in your own environment. Use an Enterprise Agent if the browser needs to be on a VPN or behind a firewall in order to load the target page.

For tests that provide details on page load times by agent, the ThousandEyes UI includes a special view tab called Waterfall. For more information, see Navigating Waterfall Charts for Page Load and Transaction Tests for more information.

A scripting tool called the ThousandEyes IDE Recorder helps with generating browser scripts based on real-world interactions.

If you just need to run a test using API calls, and don’t need to emulate a user journey in a browser, use the API Test Type.