Simulate network conditions with a C/C++ Socket

Question

I'm looking for a way to add network emulation to a socket.

The basic solution would be some way to add bandwidth limitation to a connection.

The ideal solution for me would:

• Support advanced network properties (latency, packet-loss)
• Open-source
• Have a similar API as standard sockets (or wraps around them)
• Work on both Windows and Linux
• Support IPv4 and IPv6

I saw a few options that work on the system level, or even as proxy (Dummynet, WANem, neten, etc.), but that won't work for me, because I want to be able to emulate each socket manually (for example, open one socket with modem emulation and one with 3G emulation. Basically I want to know how these tools do it.

EDIT: I need to embed this functionality in my own product, therefore using an extra box or a third-party tool that needs manual configuration is not acceptable. I want to write code that does the same thing as those tools do, and my question is how to do it.

Epilogue: In hindsight, my question was a bit misleading. Apparently, there is no way to do what I wanted directly on the socket. There are two options:

Add delays to send/receive operation (Based on @PaulCoccoli's answer):
by adding a delay before sending and receiving, you can get a very crude network simulation (constant delay for latency, delay sending, as to not send more than X bytes per second, for bandwidth).
Paul's answer and comment were great inspiration for me, so I award him the bounty.

Add the network simulation logic as a proxy (Based on @m0she and others answer):
Either send the request through the proxy, or use the proxy to intercept the requests, then add the desired simulation. However, it makes more sense to use a ready solution instead of writing your own proxy implementation - from what I've seen Dummynet is probably the best choice (this is what webpagetest.org does). Other options are in the answers below, I'll also add DonsProxy
This is the better way to do it, so I'm accepting this answer.

Answer 1

You can compile a proxy into your software that would do that. It can be some implementation of full fledged socks proxy (like this) or probably better, something simpler that would only serve your purpose (and doesn't require prefixing your communication with the destination and other socks overhead). That code could run as a separate process or a thread within your process.

Adding throttling to a proxy shouldn't be too hard. You can:

• delay forwarding of data if it passes some bandwidth limit
• add latency by adding timer before read/write operations on buffers.
• If you're working with connection based protocol (like TCP), it would be senseless to drop packets, but with a datagram based protocol (UDP) it would also be simple to implement.

The connection creation API would be a bit different from normal posix/winsock (unless you do some macro or other magic), but everything else (send/recv/select/close/etc..) is the same.

Answer 2

If you're building this into your product, then you should implement a layer of abstraction over the sockets API so you can select your own implementation at run time. Alternatively, you can implement wrappers of each socket function and select whether to call your own version or the system's version.

As for adding latency, you could have your implementation of the sockets API spin off a thread. In that thread, have a priority queue ordered by time (i.e. this background thread does a very basic discrete event simulation). Each "packet" you send or receive could be enqueued along with a delivery time. Each delivery time should have some amount of delay added. I would use some kind of random number generator with a Gaussian distribution.

The background thread would also have to simulate the other side of the connection, though it sounds like you may have already implemented that part?

Answer 3

I know only Network Link Conditioner for Mac OS X Lion. You should be mac developer to download it, so i cannot put download link there. Only description from 9to5mac.com: http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/10/new-in-os-x-lion-network-link-conditioner-utility-lets-you-simulate-internet-and-bandwidth-conditions/

Answer 4

This answer might be a partial solution for you when using linux: Simulate delayed and dropped packets on Linux. It refers to a kernel module called netem, which can simulate all kinds of network problems.

If you want to work with TCP connections, having "packet loss" could be problematic since a lot of error-handling (like recovering lost packages) is done in the kernel. Simulating this in a cross-platform way could be hard.

Answer 5

you usually add a network device to your network that throttles the bandwidth or latency, on a port by port basis, you can then achieve what you want just by connecting to the port allocated to the particular type of crappy network you want to test, with no code changes or modifications required.

The easiest ways to do this is just add iptables rules to a Linux server acting as a proxy.

If you want it to work without the separate device, try trickle that is a software package that throttles your network on your client PC. (or for Windows)

Answer 6

You may would like to check WANem http://wanem.sourceforge.net/ . WANEM is Open Source and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

WANem allows the application development team to setup a transparent application gateway which can be used to simulate WAN characteristics like Network delay, Packet loss, Packet corruption, Disconnections, Packet re-ordering, Jitter, etc.

Answer 7

I think you could use a tool like Network Simulator. It's free, for Windows.

The only thing to do is to setup your program to use the right ports (and the settings for the network, of course).

Answer 8

If you want a software only solution that you control, you will have to implement it yourself. I know of no such existing package.

While a wrapper layer over a socket may give you the ability to introduce delay, it won't be sufficient to introduce loss or out of order delivery. In order to simulate those activities, you actually need intercept the data in transit between the two TCP stacks.

The approach I would recommend is to use a tunneling device (say tunX). Routes should be set so the client believes the way to the server is through tunX. Additional code (perhaps running in a different thread) would promiscuously intercept traffic on tunX, and perform your augmented behavior, before forwarding packets over the true physical interface that will get the traffic to your server. The reverse would happen for packets arriving from the server on the physical interface. Those packets would be intercepted by the client code, behavior augmented, before forwarding through tunX.

However, since you are testing client software, I am unclear as to why you would want to embed this code in your released software, unless the software itself is a WAN simulating client.