Once you establish a usage profile, compare it to sample pre-defined user bases that are described in this section. A user base is made up of the types of Instant Messaging operations that your users will perform. Instant Messaging users fall into one of these user bases:
The sample user bases described in this section broadly generalize user behavior. Your particular usage profile might not exactly match the user bases; you will be able to adjust these differences when you run your load simulator (as described in Using an Instant Messaging Load Simulator).
A lightweight user base typically consists of users with simple Instant Messaging requirements. These users rarely initiate chat sessions and rarely receive invitations. They might only use Instant Messaging as a presence tool.
A heavy user uses significantly more system resources than a casual user. Typical usage for a this type of user may be something like the following:
Presence updates equal to or greater than 20 times a day.
Contact list contains about 30 contacts.
Subscribes to the presence updates of all the contacts in the contact list.
Sets up around four conferences or chats per day where each conference has three people in the conference room and lasts an average of 10 minutes, and a message is added to the conference every 1-15 seconds.