Simulate low-bandwidth conditions with Chrome’s network throttling

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Mattias Geniar, November 06, 2015

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Chrome has a built-in developer feature that allows you to simulate low-bandwidth conditions on website. This is very useful if you’re testing mobile versions of an application (with GPRS/3G/4G/…) or want to test network congestions and high latency situations. And it’s built-in to Chrome already!

To get started, browse to any website you want to test. Right click the page and choose Inspect Element to open the Chrome Devtools.

chrome_devtools_inspect_element

Once you’re in the Devtools, go to Network and find the dropdown on the right which will say No Throttling.

chrome_devtools_network_throttling

The default presets give you a range of options from superslow GPRS to DSL to WiFi.

chrome_devtools_network_throttling_presets

If the presets aren’t enough, you can add a custom network throttling profile with bandwidth and latency of your choosing by selecting Add in the selection dropdown.

chrome_devtools_network_throttling_add_preset

If you’ve selected a preset, the Network tab will have a little icon in front of it to indicate you’re artificially manipulating your connection to the server.

chrome_devtools_throttling_enabled

For the most extreme test, I’ve chosen the GPRS Networking Throttling profile and here’s the timing result of the network request: it’s split up in DNS lookup, initial connection, time to first byte (TTFB) & total content download (which is mostly affected by the connection throttling you select).

chrome_devtools_network_slow_download

The same page of that test site with no throttling shows a much quicker response & time to first byte.

chrome_devtools_network_fast_download

This is a cool little trick that can help debug strange low-bandwidth conditions!



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