What language, what design?

Here is my task. We need to stress test a server application. It works similar to a web server in that it is a request/response synchronous style communication.

I need to simulate hundreds of clients connecting, sending a command, disconnecting, connecting, sending a command, disconnecting and so on. So each client needs to connect, send, receive, disconnect many times. And I need to simulate up to 1000 clients simultaneously.

I am a perl coder mostly and constructed a multiclient script that works fine until I hit limitations. These limits are either a maximum number of sockets or maximum number of threads, or both. So my limit there ends up being about 60 simultaneous clients. I can run from several computers as well.

I thought I should learn C++ anyway so I went looking for some model code for an IOCP server but haven't found any good examples where I can just sorta plug in my own business logic.

It seems like this multi-client is just like a server except for it initiates conversations rather than responds to them. And it needs a good method of having hundreds of sockets open without major thread thrashing and so forth.

How do you think I should approach and design such an animal in a fairly short period of time? What language? What forum should I post a question like this?

Thanks for your opinions!!

Well, I didn't get much direction. However, I didn't sit idle either. I whipped up a program in java (learning java on the way) and can now produce 150-200 clients so far using a thread-per-client design.

I'll work on switching to a queueing system where a small number of threads manage the sockets. It's a great way to learn other languages and learn more client/server coding