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How to Manage Network Bandwidth

Overview​

warning

This recipe only works when using Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP).

Read details in the section “How to use CDP in Testplane”.

A large number of users access services from mobile devices where internet speed can be quite slow or may even drop out intermittently. In webdriverio, we can limit network bandwidth using the throttle method, thereby testing the website's behavior under various network conditions.

Besides custom settings, the throttle method supports the following ready-made presets:

  • offline | online
  • GPRS
  • Regular2G | Good2G
  • Regular3G | Good3G
  • Regular4G
  • DSL
  • WiFi

Example 1: Emulating a 2G Connection​

Let's emulate a 2G connection and open yandex.ru in Chrome with phone emulation:

it("should open yandex.ru with emulation of 2G-connection", async function () {
    // Emulate a 2G connection
    await this.browser.throttle("Good2G");

    await this.browser.url("https://yandex.ru");
});

Example 2: Emulating a Network with Given Characteristics​

We can also emulate a connection with specific characteristics:

it("should open yandex.ru with emulation of custom connection", async function () {
    // Emulate a network connection with specified characteristics
    await this.browser.throttle({
        offline: false, // emulate offline state
        downloadThroughput: (10 * 1024) / 8, // max download bandwidth (byte/sec)
        uploadThroughput: (10 * 1024) / 8, // max upload bandwidth (byte/sec)
        latency: 10, // min latency from sending the request to receiving the response headers
    });

    await this.browser.url("https://yandex.ru");
});