Who is online load* trying to stress my vB site
 

In vboptions -> vboptions -> who's online there is a time setting for updating the who is online. Ours is now set to 60 seconds. When people are viewing the actual page where it lists the people online* there is the odd characteristic of always showing people logged on i.e. leave that page open* walk away* and hours later whoever is viewing that page will still be shown online.

I want to stress test my vB hosting account to see how many people can be supported. I've looked at webhostingtalk.com and they mention the AB apache command but I'm unclear if that would test the in/out going connections to the account
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/ab.html

I looked around and found some DDoS software* notbly something called 'smurf' and that appears to only hammer an ip.

If I set the refresh rate for the whos online page to 1 second* and had a bunch of people leave that page open* would that mean anything as to how the vB hosting account could be stressed?

What I mean is* if there are 100 people with that page open* and it was being refreshed every second* couldn't I look at the loads via the cPanel?
100 people online being refreshed every second = Load X
100 people online being refreshed every 2 seconds = Load Y


Or is this a really really dumb idea? :confused:

Maybe this thread should be in the server area* let me know.