This bash script offers quick shortcuts to simulate slower network connections. It is useful when you need to simulate a wireless network on a Linux network server, especially when you are using a virtual machine guest on your local machine or in the cloud.

slow 3G                   # Slow network on default eth0 down to 3G wireless speeds
slow reset                # Reset connection for default eth0 to normal
slow vsat --latency=500ms # Simulate satellite internet  with a high latency
slow dsl -b 1mbps         # Simulate DSL with a slower speed than the default
slow modem-56k -d eth0    # Simulate a 56k modem on the eth1 device. eth0 is unchanged.

Richard Bullington-McGuire [email protected] wrote the script inspired by a UI suggestion from Mike Schwartz [email protected].

Stack Overflow and Superuser questions that helped:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/402377/using-getopts-in-bash-shell-script-to-get-long-and-short-command-line-options/7680682#7680682
• http://superuser.com/questions/147156/simulating-a-low-bandwidth-high-latency-network-connection-on-linux

An Aptivate blog post lent some inspiration, as did this script for throttling bandwidth.