Network conditioning

Network conditioning allows to simulate participants with different types of network connections, like 4G or 3G, and some other network limitations users might have. Testing with network conditioning allows you to observe how your app handles connectivity issues from users with various limitations to their network connection. You can even condition the network to various settings dynamically throughout the test. This means it is possible to limit a participant's network connection and then reset it back to the best possible setting and observe whether the connection gets fully restored successfully.

The table below summarizes specific settings of each pre-defined network configuration provided by Loadero and serves as a reference point for choosing appropriate settings. Your test participants can use any of these configurations. If network settings differ for incoming/outgoing flow, the incoming setting is given first. Where no value is given in a column - the network is not limited in that particular aspect.

info

When using Loadero's API, you can reference the different newtork configuration options by the values provided in the API identifier column.

Network mode	Bandwidth	Packet loss	Latency	Jitter	API identifier
Default					default
4G	100mbps / 50mbps	0.2%	45ms	5ms / 15ms	4g
3.5G/HSDPA	20mbps / 10mbps	0.5%	150ms	10ms	hsdpa
3G	1200kbps	0.5%	250ms	50ms	3g
GPRS	80kbps / 20kbps	1%	650ms	100ms	gprs
Edge	200kbps / 260kbps	1%	650ms	100ms	edge
Asymmetric	500kbps / 1000kbps		50ms	10ms	asymmetric
Satellite phone	1000kbps / 256kbps		600ms		satellite
5% packetloss		5%			5packet
10% packetloss		10%			10packet
20% packetloss		20%			20packet
50% packetloss		50%			50packet
100% packetloss		100%			100packet
High latency			500ms	50ms	latency
High jitter			200ms	100ms	jitter
Custom					Cannot be set via the API.

When creating test participants, the default network configuration is automatically selected - this setting corresponds to the best possible network settings that Amazon Web Services can ensure without any artificially imposed limitations.

You can simply change the network conditions to another setting when creating the participant or editing the participant afterwards. For more information on participant creation, consult our quickstart guide.

Custom network configuration

You can also apply fully custom network settings by adjusting parameter values that fit your specific use case.

This can only be done from within the test script itself by using Loadero's custom "Update Network" command.

If you would like to use a custom network configuration, you will still have to select a predefined network setting when creating your test participants. However, you can immediately apply a custom network configuration to your participants as soon as they start the test, and then have that custom configuration be active all throughout the rest of the test.

Changing network settings during a test run

It is possible to change network settings for a participant in the middle of the test. The network conditions setting you choose when creating your participant are the conditions your participant will start with, however, you can switch to a different setting by calling the "Update Network" command in the test script.

tip

This can be particularly useful for testing how an application may recover from a stutter in connection.