Load vs. Stress testing
What is the difference between load and stress testing?
Answer
Wikipedia on load testing (bold is mine):
[...]A load test is usually conducted to understand the behaviour of the system under a specific expected load. This load can be the expected concurrent number of users on the application performing a specific number of transactions within the set duration. This test will give out the response times of all the important business critical transactions.[...]
and on stress testing:
understand the upper limits of capacity within the system. This kind of test is done to determine the system's robustness in terms of extreme load and helps application administrators to determine if the system will perform sufficiently if the current load goes well above the expected maximum.
So the bottom line is: if you are testing normal, expected load (you know the system will be used by up to 100 users at a time), this is load testing. But when you want to determine how the system behaves under extreme load (DoS, Slashdot effect) and when it breaks, this is stress testing.