Simulate limited bandwidth from within Chrome?

Question

Is there a way I can simulate various connection speeds from within Chrome?

I need to be able to check http://localhost with varying speeds.

I know there are

Answer 1

Original article: https://helpdeskgeek.com/networking/simulate-slow-internet-connection-testing/

Simulate Slow Connection using Chrome Go ahead and install Chrome if you don’t already have it installed on your system. Once you do, open a new tab and then press CTRL + SHIFT + I to open the developer tools window or click on the hamburger icon, then More tools and then Developer tools.

This will bring up the Developer Tools window, which will probably be docked on the right side of the screen. I prefer it docked at the bottom of the screen since you can see more data. To do this, click on the three vertical dots and then click on the middle dock position.

Now go ahead and click on the Network tab. On the right, you should see a label called No Throttling.

If you click on that, you’ll get a dropdown list of a pre-configured speed that you can use to simulate a slow connection.

The choices range from Offline to WiFi and the numbers are shown as Latency, Download, Upload. The slowest is GPRS followed by Regular 2G, then Good 2G, then Regular 3G, Good 3G, Regular 4G, DSL and then WiFi. Pick one of the options and then reload the page you are on or type in another URL in the address bar. Just make sure you are in the same tab where the developer tools are being displayed. The throttling only works for the tab you have it enabled for.

If you want to use your own specific values, you can click the Add button under Custom. Click on the Add Custom Profile button to add a new profile.

When using GPRS, it took www.google.com a whopping 16 seconds to load! Overall, this is a great tool that is built right into Chrome that you can use for testing your website load time on slower connections. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!

Answer 2

As suggested on the Chrome Mobile Emulation page, you can use Clumsy on Windows, Network Link Conditioner on Mac OS X and dummynet on Linux.

Answer 3

If you are running Linux, the following command is really useful for this:

trickle -s -d 50 -w 100 firefox

The -s tells the command to run standalone, the -d 50 tells it to limit bandwidth to 50 KB/s, the -w 100 set the peak detection window size to 100 KB. firefox tells the command to start firefox with all of this rate limiting applied to any sites it attempts to load.

Update

Chrome 38 is out now and includes throttling. To find it, bring up the Developer Tools: Ctrl+Shift+I does it on my machine, otherwise Menu->More Tools->Developer Tools will bring you there.

Then Toggle Device Mode by clicking the phone in the upper left of the Developer Tools Panel (see the tooltip below).

Then activate throttling like so.

If you find this a bit clunky, my suggestion above works for both Chrome and Firefox.

Answer 4

I don't think what you ask can be done by chrome alone. The closest I could find was this, which isn't what you want. I getting a chrome plugin to do it would be Hard.

A web proxy running on your local machine could achieve the effect you want. A search for "throttling proxy" came up with this, for example.

Answer 5

As Michael said, the Chrome extension API doesn't offer a reliable way of doing this. On the other hand: there's a software I've been using myself for quite some time.

Try Sloppy, a Java application that simulates low bandwidth. It's browser independent, it's very easy to use and, best of all, it's free!

Answer 6

Note, do not use Chrome's built in Speed Tester (it will show you unthrottled speed). Instead use another site, like Fast.com. That will show you properly throttled speeds.

Also, the throttling settings might be hidden and can be accessed from the network bar by clicking the tiny down arrow.