4/10/2026 at 7:33:39 PM
In the same direction, I once wanted to test an embedded device on crap wifi.So I just ordered the cheapest AP I could find.
Except the damn device worked perfectly. Slow but rock solid.
One of our testers at $CURRENT_JOB also has trouble simulating a crap network, because our network is good.
by nottorp
4/10/2026 at 9:51:10 PM
Coming up on 20 years ago I was building a system that was going to be deployed at various locations throughout a very large country. All locations had internet access; but the throughput, latency, and quality (e.g. packet drops) were all over the map.For testing we ended up building a small linux box to proxy for the test environment in the office. We could throttle the throughput to any arbitrary level, introduce latency, and introduce packet drops. It's amazing how poorly a frontend will work when you throttle the network to 128kbps, and introduce a small percentage of dropped packets. But once you get the system to work (for some definition of "work") under those conditions you feel pretty good about deploying it.
by makr17
4/11/2026 at 7:10:34 AM
I remember Facebook while developing it's mobile app in the early days of smartphones did similar tests.https://highscalability.com/how-facebook-makes-mobile-work-a...
by contraposit
4/10/2026 at 8:27:12 PM
You can simulate bad wifi with the throttling option on the network tab of your browser's developer toolsby gnopgnip
4/11/2026 at 7:55:59 AM
> You can simulate bad wifi with the throttling option on the network tab of your browser's developer toolsOh? How does that help for native applications?
> You can always also simulate bad WiFi by walking away from your access point until you have bad wifi
That's unfortunately very inconvenient when you work on an embeddeded device prototype that consists of several boards interconnected by hair thin wires :)
Maybe I should make some friends across the street to the point they give me access to their APs...
by nottorp
4/10/2026 at 9:13:01 PM
That’s an unreliable way of simulating an unreliable network, as overviewed in https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2016/testing-with-realistic-...by dieulot
4/10/2026 at 9:26:43 PM
Slow networks != Bad networks. Bad networks could be slow, or drop random packets, or corrupt packets, or have jitter, etcby patmorgan23
4/10/2026 at 11:30:10 PM
You can always also simulate bad WiFi by walking away from your access point until you have bad wifiby SOLAR_FIELDS
4/10/2026 at 7:48:28 PM
Some proxies, iptables extensions, and OS-provided tools exist - there's almost certainly a combo that would work for them. What platform?Unless it's for a custom physical device, then uh. idk. Probably something, proxying through another computer that is hosting a separate wifi network? But likely a lot harder.
by Groxx
4/10/2026 at 7:53:31 PM
I think he figured it out eventually, used some software tool. But I heard the complaining first.by nottorp
4/10/2026 at 9:13:08 PM
I'm building a product that helps out Docker usage in poorly networked environments (ie, robotics deployments). I've just been moving the Jetson around the house.by a_t48
4/10/2026 at 9:23:39 PM
Putting a StarLink dish so it has a tree branch in the way is a good way to get packet loss.by callistocodes
4/11/2026 at 3:16:32 AM
Why not just loosely wrap the antenna or entire box in foil or move it to the basement/garage/roof?If you're going for realism, bad wifi is a radio signal problem.
by sublinear
4/11/2026 at 4:56:16 AM
Not necessarily, it could also be on-band or off-bad interference, or bugs in the AP, or too many clients on the network.by astrange
4/11/2026 at 12:19:12 AM
maybe look into jammers?by NooneAtAll3
4/11/2026 at 5:32:21 AM
Not an option if you want to act lawfully.by bigfatkitten