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📉 Bad Network Simulation (Network Conditioning)

Testing apps under ideal Wi-Fi conditions often masks critical bugs. Flocon provides a built-in Network Conditioner / Bad Quality Simulator that lets you simulate degraded network environments directly from the desktop companion — without touching your device's operating system settings.

Capabilities

With Flocon's Bad Network Simulation, you can configure:

  • Latency & Jitter: Add fixed delays or random latency ranges (e.g. 800ms – 3000ms) to test slow 2G/3G connections and timeout thresholds.
  • Failure Probability: Set a failure rate percentage (e.g. 25% of requests fail) to test retry mechanisms and offline resilience.
  • Custom Error Types: Choose between returning HTTP error codes (e.g. 500 Internal Server Error, 503 Service Unavailable) or hard transport exceptions (IOException, SocketTimeoutException).
  • Targeted Rules: Apply network degradation globally or target specific API domains/paths.

How It Works

  1. Open Flocon Desktop and navigate to the Network tab.
  2. Click the Network Conditioner / Bad Quality icon (or access it from the tools menu).
  3. Configure Latency:
  4. Enable Simulate Latency.
  5. Set Minimum Latency (e.g. 500 ms) and Maximum Latency (e.g. 2000 ms).
  6. Configure Error Simulation:
  7. Enable Simulate Errors.
  8. Set Failure Probability (e.g. 30%).
  9. Select Error Behavior: HTTP Status Code or Throw Exception.
  10. Toggle Enable Bad Quality.

Supported Clients

The Bad Network Simulation engine works automatically with any client using the Flocon network plugins:

val okHttpClient = OkHttpClient.Builder()
    .addInterceptor(FloconOkhttpInterceptor())
    .build()

val httpClient = HttpClient {
    install(FloconKtorPlugin)
}

val channel = ManagedChannelBuilder.forAddress(host, port)
    .intercept(FloconGrpcInterceptor())
    .build()

Testing Real-World Scenarios

1. Elevator / Subway Simulation (Intermittent Drops)

Set failure rate to 40% with IOException errors to verify that your app shows user-friendly retry banners instead of crashing.

2. Slow 3G / Poor Reception (High Latency)

Set latency between 2000ms and 5000ms to verify that loading spinners, shimmer skeletons, and cancel-on-back navigation behave properly.

3. Backend Outage (503 Service Unavailable)

Configure a 100% failure rate returning HTTP 503 to ensure your maintenance/outage screens display correctly.