Simulating latency and other network issues on Linux

March 23, 2016

If for some reason you need to simulate latency, latency, loss, duplication or re-ordering on a linux machine, use netem (command tc) as root

Adding a delay of 100ms on interface eth0:

tc qdisc add dev eth0 root netem delay 100ms

Changing the rule:

tc qdisc change dev eth0 root netem delay 150ms

Removing the rule is a simple:

tc qdisc del dev eth0 root netem delay 100ms

Simulate a delay of 100ms with a variation or plus or minus 10ms:

tc qdisc change dev eth0 root netem delay 100ms 10ms

Simulate packet loss:

tc qdisc change dev eth0 root netem loss 0.1%

Simulate packet deduplication:

tc qdisc change dev eth0 root netem duplicate 1%

Simulate packet reordering:

tc qdisc change dev eth0 root netem delay 10ms reorder 25% 50%

Sebastien Wains