{"id":9238,"date":"2022-03-07T15:49:19","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T20:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redline13.com\/blog\/?p=9238"},"modified":"2022-05-23T12:59:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T16:59:23","slug":"simulate-slow-internet-connections-with-jmeter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redline13.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/simulate-slow-internet-connections-with-jmeter\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Simulate Slow Internet Connections with JMeter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Simulate<\/p>\n

When we think of performance testing, often the first thing that comes to mind are highly scaled systems generating as much traffic as possible. This is done because we consider the most extreme conditions a production environment will encounter is when many users (or a coordinated attack) converge at once. However, extreme conditions can also be encountered at the other end of the spectrum with poor quality network connections. For example, a RedLine13 customer discovered that they had a number of production devices in exceptionally poor signal areas that were making API requests into their system via mobile networks. They were arriving at rates of bytes per minute which effectively locked up their system with what was effectively a Slow Post DDoS Attack. In this post, we will describe how RedLine13 can be used to simulate slow internet connections with JMeter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In its default behavior, JMeter will send requests defined by its samplers as fast as it can. This is desirable for producing maximal load, albeit not entirely realistic as real users (usually) don\u2019t hammer the server non-stop. If we consider mobile users who are limited by network bandwidth or even hampered by poor network signal we will notice a different performance profile. Similarly we might encounter the same type of instability for high-latency connections that send data in short bursts with long delays in between.<\/p>\n

This exact case is covered in the Apache JMeter documentation here<\/a>. There is a built-in “CPS<\/em>” (characters per second<\/em>) rate limiter that can be configured through the user.properties<\/strong><\/span> file. We are interested in the following two properties:<\/p>\n