How do I simulate a low bandwidth, high latency environment?

Nic_Waller_190298 0
Viewed 175497

I need to simulate a low bandwidth, high latency connection to a server in order to emulate the conditions of a VPN at a remote site. The bandwidth and latency should be tweakable so I can discover the best combination in order to run our software package.

latency bandwidth testing
20 Answers

For macOS, there is the Network Link Conditioner that simulates configurable bandwidth, latency, and packet loss. It is contained in the Additional Tools for Xcode package. Screenshot

user_982860

There's an excellent writeup of setting up a FreeBSD machine to do just this - take your standard old desktop, toss in an additional NIC, and build.

The writeup is available at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/filtering-bridges/article.html.

In step 5 of the above instructions, you're enabling a firewall. For just simulating a different IP connection, you could (for example) do the following:

Create a file /etc/rc.firewall.56k which contains the following:

ipfw add pipe 1 ip from any to any out
ipfw add pipe 2 ip from any to any in    
ipfw pipe 1 config bw 56Kbit/s   
ipfw pipe 2 config bw 56Kbit/s

And change /etc/rc.conf... replace the line 

firewall_type="open"

with 

firewall_type="/etc/rc.firewall.56k"

reboot, and you've got yourself a 56K bridge!

If you happen to be working from a Macintosh, that OS has ipfw built into it by default. I've done the same thing by routing network traffic over the Airport and through the ethernet, setting it up so that anything coming over the airport has the same characteristics as whatever I'm trying to emulate. You can invoke the ipfw commands directly from the terminal and get the same effects.

user_194770

In the past, I have used a bridge using the Linux Netem (Network Emulation) functionality. It is highly configurable -- allowing the introduction of delays (the first example is for a WAN), packet loss, corruption, etc.

I'm noting that Netem worked very well for my applications, but I also ended up using WANem several times. The provided bootable ISO (and virtual appliance images) made it quite handy.

Kris_K_42810

Charles

I came across Charles the web debugging proxy application and had great success in emulating network latency. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Charles on Mac

Bandwidth throttle / Bandwidth simulator

Charles can be used to adjust the bandwidth and latency of your Internet connection. This enables you to simulate modem conditions using your high-speed connection.

The bandwidth may be throttled to any arbitrary bytes per second. This enables any connection speed to be simulated.

The latency may also be set to any arbitrary number of milliseconds. The latency delay simulates the latency experienced on slower connections, that is the delay between making a request and the request being received at the other end.

DummyNet

You could also use vmware to run BSD or Linux and try this article (DummyNet) or this one.

user_38270

Try WANem

WANem is a Wide Area Network Emulator, meant to provide a real experience of a Wide Area Network/Internet, during application development / testing over a LAN environment.

epatel_8420

You can try this: CovenantSQL/GNTE just write YAML like this:

group:
  - 
    name: china
    nodes:
      - 
        ip: 10.250.1.2
        cmd: "cd /scripts && ./YourBin args"
      - 
        ip: 10.250.1.3
        cmd: "cd /scripts && ./YourBin args"
    delay: "100ms 10ms 30%"
    loss: "1% 10%"
  - 
    name: us
    nodes:
      - 
        ip: 10.250.2.2
        cmd: "cd /scripts && ./YourBin args"
      - 
        ip: 10.250.2.3
        cmd: "cd /scripts && ./YourBin args"
    delay: "1000ms 10ms 30%"
    loss: "1% 10%"

network:
  -
    groups:
      - china
      - us
    delay: "200ms 10ms 1%"
    corrupt: "0.2%"
    rate: "10mbit"

run ./generate scripts/your.yaml

user_8960260
Related