title: jmeter, simulate users with lower number of threads
body: <p>I am looking for a way to simulate more concurrent users of a web application than I use real threads in jmeter. I want to simulate close to real-world usage pattern, i.e.
  user periodically does something on the page but stays logged in 9 hours a day, then logs out. Users in other areas do same at different times, etc. I want to potentially simulate 100000 or even more users of the system. So it makes a big difference if I can use less threads than simulated users. I'll be perhaps using whatever number of amazon ec2 large instances it takes.
  I can't see any indication that this is possible with jmeter. I guess it is if I write my own sampler and use my own thread pool and save state of each logged in user to some cache but that removes a lot of benefits using the framework.</p>
  
  <p>In a <a href="http://jmeter.512774.n5.nabble.com/number-of-threads-vs-number-of-simulated-users-td2258255.html" rel="nofollow">mailing list thread</a> I'm reading some rational but it boils down to being too hard to implement and not worth. Well I think the only real way to test a web app is to simulate the anticipated real usage pattern which means a lot of idle users.
  So I'm wondering if I'm missing some way to do that or does just nobody care enough to implement?</p>