How to Throttle Browser for Testing to Simulate Poor Network?

If you have noticed, sometimes your website tends to load pretty quickly on your PC system, but at the same time, it loads terribly slowly on your smartphone or tablet. It could be any other device as well.

But when you check the load time of your personal website, if you own one, then you would be surprised to note that it takes slightly longer to load than the usual time. You can check this out using Google Webmaster.

Google Webmaster helps website owners to find out plenty of details about their sites. You can find out the speed it takes to load and several other crucial aspects of a site. In one case, we checked out a website of ours that took close to 10 seconds.

We did the same using high-speed connectivity and were disappointed to note that it took pretty long to upload. It probably has to do with our slow connection, and we may change to an ultra-high-speed broadband connection.

Why throttle the browser for testing?

This was when we decided to find out how to throttle the browser for testing purposes. Besides, we wanted to get a clear idea of how to simulate slow connectivity on our PC system as well as the smartphone, tablet, and laptop.

It is good to know what components were taking the most time to load. When you take a look around, you can find several websites suggesting you make use of debugging tools and proxies too.

On the other hand, we may not suggest that you do that. Because they require you to pay to use those tools, and you never know what unpleasant surprises might be waiting for you. Some websites are nothing by viruses in different forms that can destroy your devices.

Google Webmaster to the point

Luckily for you, you have Google Webmaster, which is entirely free to use. Moreover, it is pretty easy to use, along with Google Chrome. Now, you can easily simulate a slower network connection.

That is what we are going to discuss about in this post. We will read how you can use Chrome to throttle the internet connection at the speed that you want to.

Simulate slow connection with the help of Chrome

We are sure that you may have the Chrome browser on your PC system or smartphone. Well, if you don’t, then please install it. Now, you have to open a new tab and then press CTRL + SHIFT + I.

It opens the developer tools window, or you can click on the burger kind of icon on your PC system. You have to use the More tools options on the PC system or smartphone. You can make use of the Developer tools option found there.

Now, you can find that the Developer Tools window is open. This is found on the right side of your monitor or the smartphone screen. We like to place it at the bottom of the screen, as it shows more data for your reference.

You can easily do that by clicking on the three vertical dots that you can see. Then you will have to click on the middle dock option. This is when you have to make use of the Network tab. You can find a No Throttling label on the right side.

Methods of knowing the simulations

When you click on that, you get a dropdown of pre-configured speeds, which you can now make use of to simulate a slow connection. You have several choices to make here, like the Offline to Wi-Fi.

They are represented by latency, download, and upload. You may want to know that the slowest of them all is the GRPS, 2G, Good 2G, Regular 3G, Good 3G, and the Regular 4G as well. You can also make use of the DSL and Wi-Fi.

You can select one of the options to reload the page that you are currently fixated on and then make use of another URL in the address bar of your Chrome. You need to ensure that you are on the same tab of the developer tools getting displayed.

You will want to know that the throttling only works for the tab that it is enabled for by the user. Yes, you can make use of specific values. To do that, you will have to use the add button that is under the custom button.

Now, click on the add custom profile button, and then you can add a new profile. As you can see, network simulation helps you to simulate the performance of a website. You can do that with the help of using various bandwidths, including 2G, 3G, 4G, and the like.

As a user, it is immensely helpful to understand how the website loads and why it takes that long. Besides you also find out how the website functions if you are going to access it from different internet connectivity bandwidths.

Another viewpoint to understand how to throttle browsers for testing

Here we will take another viewpoint to understand how to throttle browsers for testing. Using these two modes, you can test to simulate poor network conditions on your website that runs on Chrome.

Network simulation using Chrome DevTools

The first method we used was the Chrome DevTools. It offers you with a network throttler in its DevTools. You can use this feature to learn & understand the performance of your websites. This is especially critical for slow network service providers.

But please do notice that it is merely a simulator, and the results on them may vary from time to time to some extent. To use the network throttler in Chrome:

• Open Chrome DevTools.
• Press Control+Shift+J or Command+Option+J (Mac)
• It would help if you navigated to the network tab.
• Open the throttling dropdown that is set to online by default.

You need to choose the Slow 3G then if you want to. You have to long press using the reload icon on the address bar’s left. Then you have to click on the empty cache, and the hard reload that is there.

The browser loads the webpage from the cache. Now, you need to choose the empty cache option that is present there, then make use of the hard reload option as well. This then makes the browser load the resources, which is useful in knowing how to experience your website.

A new visitor who is viewing your website will go through the same thing that you are going through, loading on the Slow 3G.

Chrome network throttling on real devices using Browser Stack live

The best method to find out the proper way on how the webpage can load when it is functioning on a poor network is to test them on a real browser. This is when the Browser Stack comes into play.

The Browser Stack device cloud helps you actually to test the speed of loading of your website. This is in live internet connection conditions. Of course, you are going to be using them with the help of various internet service providers for you to help which one is the best for you.

In real conditions, most of them are almost the same. It just merely depends on the kind of signal you have in a particular area. For example, in some areas, one particular network service provider does well, while in another region, another service provider’s signal is stable.

So, this feature must be considered when you want to move things in this direction. Besides, in some cases, the device and the OS installed also will have a say on that. On Browser Stack, you need to sign up, which is free, then choose the device, OS, and browser.

Depending on your preferences and choices, you can use an Apple device or an Android device. Then load the Google website over a 3G connection. You can use the Throttle Network feature to test the speed of your website on the 3G, 4G, etc.

You may have your own custom network profile values for testing website speed according to specific requirements. It becomes pretty apparent that throttling the network gives a clear picture of the loading time of a webpage on your smartphone.

This is when you want to access the webpage from different internet connections. Besides, it can help any user or specific researchers like developers or QA designers to identify whether there is any scope to improve the experience for users wanting to access the website from a slow bandwidth.

Some of the improvements we are talking about include using a progress bar or waiting for the statements to avoid your frustration with the webpage load delay. If you are a developer or a QA designer, who wants to simulate the poor network condition on your smartphone, then you can do so.

We tested the 4G network on the Samsung Galaxy S20 and on the iPhone 12 Mini and found the second method was effective in giving accurate results.

FAQs

Conclusion

We have concluded our post on how to throttle the browser for testing. We hope that you liked what you read and found it helpful. When you are making use of the GPRS, it takes the browser Google.com to run for 15 seconds for loading.

Isn’t that interesting? We felt that this is a phenomenal tool for you to fit inside Google Chrome if you are a user of it. This makes it suitable for you to test the time that your website takes to load when it is running on a slow connection.

Besides, you can also know whether it is slow or fast. Please feel free to let us know if you have any questions regarding this debatable topic. We would love to hear from you in the comment section. Feel free to comment.