Best software product to simulate connectivity issues for mobile testing

Question

I need a product to simulate network latency for testing mobile applications (in particular iphone and android). I plan to set up a wifi router connected to a linux box, and write a number of scripts to approximate different types of connectivity issues.

So far, I've taken a cursory look at Netem and ns-2 (or its offspring ns-3). Netem looks very easy to deploy and configure, but they both look like they'll require some in-depth investigation.

Does anyone have positive/negative experiences with either of those solutions that they could share? Or maybe used a different solution for this problem?

Answer 1

If anyone comes here looking for tips, I've found a solution that seems to work well.

Ubuntu comes with Netem installed, so I went ahead and just made use of that. Basically, I got a computer with two ethernet ports, forwarded one to the other and applied Netem latency settings to the connection. Then I attached a wireless router to one, and LAN to the other. Netem lets me play with all kinds of latency and packet loss settings.

Btw, I also tried to use a few different laptops and set the internal wireless card up as an ad-hoc wireless router. I got it working for the most part, but finding a laptop with an internal wireless card that plays nice with ad-hoc in Linux is tricky at best... can't recommend it.