How to throttle network traffic for environment simulation?

Question

I'm trying to test an application that uses a database connection. What I would like to do is throttling the bandwith to, say, 1 MBit or such to get a better feeling for the application under realistic conditions.

I already use Wireshark to have a look at the communication with the DB and I expected Wireshark to have a feature like that but as it seems there is no way to do something like that.

Any suggestions?

Libelee

Wireshark is primarily for monitoring, filtering, and recording network communications that are taking place, not preventing what can or cannot be sent out. – Weaver

I don't think Wireshark has that...You could change your nic card's settings to only run at 10mbs... – Succinylsulfathiazole

@Josh: that sounds like what I'm looking for. But how do I do that? – Libelee

Answer 1

Check out WANem. You can download a bootable ISO that you boot up on any system with multiple NICs which you then insert between your client and server. It lets you control bandwidth, latency, jitter, loss, and a few other parameters.

Syncarpous

Answer 2

Take a look at Trickle. Also, if you are using a router, commercial-grade router firmware generally has some QoS traffic-shaping services.

Weaver

Right now, I'm testing on a windows machine and all tools and libs I find are only available an Linux. I also have to test on OS-level, so there is no real hardware involved that I could tweak. Probably there's some kind of extension for the WinPcap driver? – Libelee

Answer 3

If you can test it out at the endpoint you could try using a browser throttler. One example is Firefox Throttle.

Raffaello

Unfortunately, the program I'm testing does not have any kind of web frontend. It's just a Java Swing Application connected to a database. (For all kinds of web applications I've already used Firefox Throttle - nice tool, btw) – Libelee

Answer 4

A program called BWMeter can do this.

Foxy

Answer 5

Check your own router, see if there is a Bandwith control or Quality Of Service (QoS) section. That way you can limit all your outgoing/incoming traffic to whatever you want.

TP-LINK has this for example:

Dissoluble