Simulating Delayed and Dropped Packets in Linux

If you’re wondering how to simulate delayed and dropped packets in Linux, the standard method involves using the netem scheduling policy. This can be applied to any network device, whether a network interface or a bridge, using the tc command from the iproute2 suite of tools.

You can find more information about iproute2 here: iproute2 Documentation

Here are a few examples of how to achieve this:

• Adding a 10ms delay to every packet transmitted on eth0:

tc qdisc add dev eth0 root netem delay 10ms

• Adding a 10ms delay and 20ms jitter to every packet bridged by br0:

tc qdisc add dev br0 root netem delay 10ms 20ms

• Randomly dropping approximately one percent of packets transmitted on eth1:

tc qdisc add dev eth1 root netem loss 1%

The netem scheduler has evolved into a highly sophisticated emulator with various possible behaviors. For more detailed information, refer to the tc-netem.8 man page from iproute2. For the definitive documentation, you can explore the source code at linux-4.XX.X/net/sched/sch_netem.c. This source code provides a detailed explanation of the Markov model used and references for further reading.