Lower my LAN connection speed

This is an odd question. Is there a way I can LOWER my laptops connection speed to the LAN? If so can someone walk me through how to do this on Windows XP?

You may ask why I'd want to do this. I need to replicate some software issues some folks are seeing in a remote area where they periodically have low speed connections. So that I can see what they are seeing (because the occurrences are sporadic) I need to downgrade my connection speed too.

Thank you in advance for any help or direction you can provide!

Captain Hair

Just how slow are we talking about here?

if you are on adsl you can usually set your connection speed lower or if you have qos you can restrict the bandwidth to your machine, but it does depend like adampi said - how low do you want to go and what are you connecting with

Hi Adam & John,

Thank you both for taking a moment to respond back and offer some feedback. I appreciate it.

I need to simulate a user trying to get some bandwidth to a T1 line that is full throttle when the user tries to connect. So I guess I would want to lower my 100 Mbps connection down to say 256kb (for part of the day while I’m testing).

If at all possible, I would like to drive this from my laptop. If I can control this via my Local Area Connection Status properties, or leverage a tool to lower my speed that would be preferable.

More details:

I must confess, in this area, my expertise is very limited. I am a C# programmer and really don’t typically get involved in networking related issues.

I’m being asked to debug some issues with a web application that I didn’t write. These issues are happening for users out of state (connecting back to a server in my building). The web app is running some client side scripts copying files from their workstation over to a server in my building.

What I’m being told is that when they are seeing their issues, the T1 line between us is getting maxed out by other areas also hitting the line. So that I can replicate their issues I’d like to lower my connection speed. I already have a good idea the solution will be to toss in some AJAX, but I need to replicate the issue so I can see the results before I could start moving this out for testing etc.


Again, thank you for any thoughts you can provide. I greatly appreciate the help.

Alright, didn't really do much searching, but here's the first couple links I found with a Google search:

Traffic Shaper XP

Net Limiter

I didn't really do much more than look at the front page, but I did see that Traffic Shaper XP is 100% freeware and works with XP. This might be just the thing you're looking for.

Thank you for the reply. I was just getting ready to install one of these when it crossed my mind, there was something I had seen a long time back on the connection properties that might do the job (at least well enough for me to replicate their issue). Turned out it worked.

Just incase someone need to know what I did . . .

In Control Panel select Network Connections and right-click on the Local Area Connection and select Properties.

On the Properties window select Configure and then click the Advanced tab. From there set the value for Link Speed & Duplex to 10 Bpms Half Duplex, and you will crawl (compaired to the 100 Bpms most of have at work).


BTW - Thank you both once again for taking the time to offer some direction. I REALLY appreciate it.

Well that's what I was thinking of at first, but you said you wanted to go as slow as a T1 line (1.5 Mbps) so I figured one of those apps would better suit you. But if making your speed 10/half worked, then that's good, too.

Yea, sorry about that. I know I asked for help getting it down REALLY low. I should have tried this first before posting and I would have seen that 10 Mbps could replicate their issue.

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to reply to my question. I really apprecate your time and help.

Thanks again!!!