A method, system, and computer readable code for improving stress testing of Web servers. An altered form of client cache is used, enabling more realistic and representative client requests to be issued during the testing process. This altered cache format is referred to herein as a “meta-cache”, and is defined as storing a minimal subset of the information that would typically be cached from a response. This minimal subset is that which enables constructing conditional HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) GET requests. By providing a capability for realistically simulating conditional requests as well as unconditional requests, the stress applied to the server is more representative of the actual traffic load it will experience. By minimizing the amount of information kept in the meta-cache, this realistic simulation is possible without the overhead of a full client cache, and also allows more browsers to be simulated from a particular workstation.