Developer tools: simulating a poor-quality network

Facebook's engineers have a constraint: making sure their platform works even where mobile connectivity is very poor.

I remember a line from the movie The Social Network that stuck with me at the time, even though it was exaggerated: "In Bosnia, they don't have roads, but they have Facebook"

And this presence around the globe confronts engineers with huge differences in equipment from country to country, particularly in terms of network and Internet speed, thus presenting a major technical challenge.

There's actually an article about their work on simulating reduced connectivity on their blog: https://engineering.fb.com/production-engineering/augmented-traffic-control-a-tool-to-simulate-network-conditions/

If you don't have the same needs as Facebook, being able to easily test how your web applications behave on a poor network is essential, since it's also one of the components of web accessibility!

The solution

The developer console is one of the most useful tools in a web developer's life, and regularly exploring its possibilities, depending on your browser, is a good thing to do!

All the more so since, with each update, many new features are regularly added!

One of these features lets you simulate a mobile connection that's degraded compared to your current connection. GPRS, Edge, 3G, 4G,... many options are available so you can check that your site or application loads despite the poor connectivity!

How to access it

This feature is available in particular in the developer consoles of Chrome and Firefox, but it should also be available in your browser of choice.

To access it (Chrome/Firefox), simply open the developer tools (F12), go to the "Network" tab, and you should see a dropdown menu appear right below the tabs, letting you choose the desired network speed:

Once you've enabled the option, remember to reload the page with the cache disabled (CTRL+Shift+R), otherwise your page might load too fast using data already loaded by the browser.

Having used it very regularly, I can assure you that it's an extremely handy tool that I highly recommend!