One of the major benefits of using JMeter is that it is open source. As a result, it has a high level of community involvement that has lead to the creation of ample plugins that can be used to extend it and provide functionality that doesn't come out of the box. In the rare event that a plugin you need doesn't already exist, or the already existing one doesn't suit your needs, nothing stops you from creating one and contributing to the community. This is a huge win for JMeter over other closed commercial tools, as this opens up a new realm of possibilities.
JMeter comes bundled with an FTP sampler out of the box. In today's world of high secrecy, this protocol is too weak to use to transfer any kind of sensitive information between two machines, as information is not relayed over a secure channel and is thus subject to eavesdropping. To transfer files securely, we will develop a minimalistic SFTP component (credit goes to Yoann Ciabaud) that...