Simulate low bandwidth/high latency - ET

Our lab here use IPNetSIm - link below - which is great but pricey for a one off. You might consider using an old desktop with a couple of NiCs and some of the open source software. There's a howto link below.

http://www.gl.com/ipnetsim.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/filtering-bridges/article.html

If you want something portable a laptop with an extra NIC via USB or PC Card would work if you can get Linux drivers for the extra network connectors

Thanks giltjr,
Which linux OS would you recommend? All of these are supported: Fedora, OpenSuse, Gentoo, Debian, Mandriva, Ubuntu

I have very little experience with linux so which would be the most simple to use?

I use Fedora, only because I started out using Red Hat Linux.  I have used OpenSuse before also, but only because we have one product that uses SuSE Enterprise and i needed something to test on.

I have not used the others, but for the most part Linux is Linux.

Doing this is kind of a one of.  Even people that manage Linux would have some difficulty doing this only because in involves using netem which probably 90% of Linux admins have never touched, even if they have heard of it.   I'll try to write up what I did and also post my scripts over the next couple of days.

Thanks giltjr,
Can you also share the commands to bridge the two adapters? I was going to follow these directions (http://tdistler.com/2011/06/10/netem-wan-emulation-how-to-setup-a-netem-box) however someone wrote in the comments that when they brought "bridge adapter up it caused a loop killing the entire office network connection."

The site you referenced has the instruction you need to bridge the network adapters.

The only thing you will need to check is how your Linux distribution names network interfaces.  The site uses the "old" eth0, eth1 type names.  New Linux distributions names the network interfaces based on if the are on the mother board (em1, em2, ect.) or in PCI adapter cards where the name is based on what PCI slot the card is in and how many ports are on the card.

The other thing will need to do is add something so that when you reboot the computer the bridge is setup again.  I don't see where his instructions are doing that so if you were to reboot the PC the bridge would be "gone".

I need to clean up some stuff in my files, they have some internal documentation that is unique to my company and I can let that out.

I followed his instructions and everything looks to be setup correctly however the "bridged" computer (wyse zero client) is not getting a connection.
The linux machine has internet connection and i confirmed bridge is setup by running "brctl show br0"
I also ran the command to remove any filtering that may be in place.

Try issing the command:

ifconfig

on the Linux machine. You should see the br0 interface, and both Ethernet interfaces up.

Everything looks good. Do you see anything wrong here.
Network cable is plugged into p3p1 and cable from em1 goes to my zero client.
Note, right now p3p1 has an IP however i tried the command that sets IP of both nics to 0.0.0.0 and that didnt do it either.

[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig
br0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet6 fe80::223:aeff:feb0:f21b  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:23:ae:b0:f2:1b  txqueuelen 0  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 548  bytes 41010 (40.0 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 1  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 8  bytes 648 (648.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

em1: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet6 fe80::223:aeff:feb0:f21b  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:23:ae:b0:f2:1b  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 33  bytes 6194 (6.0 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 338  bytes 23761 (23.2 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 21  memory 0xfe6e0000-fe700000  

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 0  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 207  bytes 18954 (18.5 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 207  bytes 18954 (18.5 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

p3p1: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.37.164  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.37.255
        inet6 fe80::2c0:ddff:fe10:f4f8  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:c0:dd:10:f4:f8  txqueuelen 256  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 12427  bytes 6354365 (6.0 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 3  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 4309  bytes 443748 (433.3 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 18  
[root@localhost ~]# brctl show br0
bridge name    bridge id        STP enabled    interfaces
br0        8000.0023aeb0f21b       no                 em1
                                                                         p3p1

You need Apache and PHP installed and Apache needs to be configured to support server side installs.

You can remotely manage the "network emulation" box by giving interface br0 an IP address that is valid for your subnet.  Otherwise you need to access the box physically.

You will need to change the nic names in setib.html and setib.php.  On my PC em1 is the server side interface and p3p1 is the client side.  Make sure you know which NIC you want on which side.  The commands are interface and direction unique.  If you connect the network cables in correctly, then you get "normal" traffic bandwidth and latency.

I have it setup to simulate 2% packet loss and 0.4%  duplicate packets.  You can change this by adjusting the number in the setib.php file.

Three files here.  Once you download them rename them by removing the ".txt"

setib.shtml: main web page.  When you want to set the bandwidth you point your browser to the IP address or host name of the "bandwidth emulation box" with the url /setib.shtm, like http://localhost/setib.shtml.   On that page you enter the IP address of the sever you want to test with and then select one of the options from the pull down list.

setib.php: php file to issue the command to set or clear bandwidth emulation settings.

bandwidth.html: file that gets included in setib.shmtl that has a list of pre-set bandwidth and latency options.  You can add or modify as you see fit.
bandwidth.html.txt
setib.php.txt
setib.shtml.txt

Just saw your other post.

I would suggest you run tcpdump against em1 and p3p1.

tcpdump -s0 -i em1 -w tdem1.cap &
tcpdump -s0 -i p3p1 -w tdp3p1.cap &

try to access something from the workstation.  Then kill both of the tcpdump commands and look at with wireshark.

I would also (as I sated in my prior post) but the IP address on the br0 interface.

Finally got the bridge up and working. Think i was using a bad nic card originally.

Now i will work on the rest of configuration.

Should all 3 files be placed in /var/www/html/  ?

Yes.

thanks. Can you also post how to make the bridge permanent (wont delete on reboot)?

What Linux distribution are you using?

Fedora release 20 (Heisenbug)

I'm working from home today and don't have access to my system.  I get it to you tomorrow, I'm running an older level of  Fedora.

So I don't have to retype it, here is a link.

Basically in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts you setup the ifcfg-xxx files as needed.  

http://acidborg.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/how-to-configure-a-network-bridge-in-red-hat-fedora/