Chrome and Firefox have bandwidth throttling built in to their Developer
Tools, but it's a little buried. In both browsers, the option in Developer
Tools for turning on the mobile view (called Responsive Design Mode in FF
and Device Toolbar in Chrome) are turned on with the phone/tablet icon:

[image: throttling-chrome.png]

And have a dropdown menu in the the browser view that turns on bandwidth
throttling:

[image: throttling-firefox.png]

Firefox has a much wider range of speeds than Chrome, but they'll both do
in a pinch. Firefox can go down to around ~50 Kbps, which is plenty slow,
and Chrome lets you create your own bandwidth throttles (under the
Performance menu in Developer Tools) all the way down to 1983 modem speeds.

We use it all the time to gauge how well we're doing. Nothing has given me
more of a shudder than loading our site in a screen reader with bandwidth
throttled to regular 2G network speed.

Ben

On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 7:35 PM Fitchett, Deborah <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Kia ora koutou, hope all are keeping well,
>
> With our users all working from home, with varying internet connections,
> while the rest of the country are playing WoW or watching Netflix, we're
> getting an increase of complaints about a Certain Product loading slowly
> and/or in funny ways. We report this to the Vendor who predictably says
> they can't replicate it, presumably because they don't live/work on a New
> Zealand farm which may or may not be getting anything better than dialup.
>
> So I'm wondering - is there any tool that can let you simulate how a
> website behaves at different connection speeds (like you can get sites or
> browser tools simulating what your site looks like at different sized
> screens?)
>
> This would be a great developer tool but also in this case a great
> troubleshooting tool.
>
> Deborah
>
> ________________________________
>
> "The contents of this e-mail (including any attachments) may be
> confidential and/or subject to copyright. Any unauthorised use,
> distribution, or copying of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you
> have received this e-mail in error, please advise the sender by return
> e-mail or telephone and then delete this e-mail together with all
> attachments from your system."
>


-- 
Ben Florin
Web Developer
Boston College Libraries
617-552-4582
[log in to unmask]