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I am writing a website and want to test its speed on slower internet connections.

I have the unfortunate first world problem of downloading at 100mbps, how can I throttle my own computer's internet connection to 56kbps or 5mbps to give myself an idea of how my users might be downloading my website?

EDIT: I am using Windows primarily but I also have an laptop running on Ubuntu if the answer is Linux-oriented.

Prokop Hanzl
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darkAsPitch
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5 Answers5

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If you are using google chrome or chrome based browser right click anywhere in the page and click inspect element or (Control + Shift + I) if on windows, the click the "network" tab, change the no throttling option to the speed of your choice...

Am sure you will be fine as long as the DevTools are open. you will find similar option on other browsers.

konzo
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  • You can also use F12 – kasperd Apr 07 '16 at 07:30
  • ohh didn't know that... – konzo Apr 07 '16 at 07:42
  • It's worth noting that this will not work for any connections that use WebSockets and I believe WebRTC too. – Mythrillic Aug 24 '17 at 08:42
  • @Mythrillic did you experince that? – konzo Aug 24 '17 at 11:50
  • @konzo yeah, was testing some stuff earlier that uses websockets and the throttle option had no effect. You can try yourself by going to beta.speedtest.net and setting the throttle and then starting a speed test as the speedtest is performed over a websocket and it won't make a difference regardless of your throttle setting. otherwise google 'speed test' and set the same throttle option and follow the prompts, same behavior occurs – Mythrillic Aug 24 '17 at 14:50
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Can you not just get a router/switch that supports QoS and filter it that way? I know if you use the Tomato firmware on the WRT54G they have quite a few options that may work for you. http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3800416/How-to-Manage-Traffic-Using-Tomato-and-QoS.htm

Edit: Matter of fact, I had a friend of mine that upgraded his internet connection but didn't upgrade his router config and it appeared to him that he never got increased. So you should be able to do something similar.

Eric
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  • Interesting. I do have a router that offers QoS but unfortunately my new router MUST be the one provided by my cable company. They can turn it on and off remotely, it's kind of creepy. I will dig around in those settings (they actually offer some, surprisingly) but they are very limited so hopefully they haven't cut out that functionality. I can see how they might, as they would assume most customers wouldn't know what to do with them. – darkAsPitch Jun 24 '12 at 20:45
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On Linux Systems with IP table you could try using the Kernel traffic shaping options.

Here as a good article: IPTABLES - Limit rate of a specific incoming IP

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Christopher Perrin
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Although you could try to do this via network simulation or downgrading your bandwidth, I recommend doing it on the client instead, using your webpage editor Dreamweaver, or some shell scripting.

To do that in Dreamweaver

Select Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Dreamweaver > Preferences (Macintosh). Select Status Bar from the Category list on the left. Select a connection speed with which to calculate download time and click OK.

To do it via math, calculate total page sizes and embedded images, script, etc then compare across different speeds.

Understanding the user's perception of "fast" When thinking about speed of internet connections, remember that speed (latency) and bandwidth (breadth of the pipe) are two different things completely. You should consider both in building webpages, including browser render times.

Brennan
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  • The problem with doing it via a true browser is that I have a few MySQL queries happening server side that I am worried are maybe too much for certain pages. After the page loads I do a few ajax calls that query the database for more info to load, depending on the page. – darkAsPitch Jun 24 '12 at 20:43
  • Above is more in the WYSIWG editor than true browser, unless tabbing... Database queries that are cached shouldn't be an issue http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/query-cache.html / I would be more concerned about slow AJAX though. The best tests are those that are most representative. – Brennan Jun 24 '12 at 21:30
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use the WANEM (http://wanem.sourceforge.net/) to simulate an acutal network. The .iso works just fine. For limited tests the .iso + VirtualBox works just fine. Is free.

Leo
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