kb/data/developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Network_throttling-0.md

title	chunk	source	category	tags	date_saved	instance
Network throttling - Glossary | MDN	1/3	https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Network_throttling	reference	web, html, css, javascript, documentation	2026-05-05T05:38:36.249269+00:00	kb-cron

• Skip to main content
• Skip to search

MDN HTML HTML: Markup language

HTML reference

• Elements
• Global attributes
• Attributes
• See all…

HTML guides

• Responsive images
• HTML cheatsheet
• Date & time formats
• See all…

Markup languages

• SVG
• MathML
• XML

CSS CSS: Styling language

CSS reference

• Properties
• Selectors
• At-rules
• Values
• See all…

CSS guides

• Box model
• Animations
• Flexbox
• Colors
• See all…

Layout cookbook

• Column layouts
• Centering an element
• Card component
• See all…

JavaScriptJS JavaScript: Scripting language

JS reference

• Standard built-in objects
• Expressions & operators
• Statements & declarations
• Functions
• See all…

JS guides

• Control flow & error handing
• Loops and iteration
• Working with objects
• Using classes
• See all…

Web APIs Web APIs: Programming interfaces

Web API reference

• File system API
• Fetch API
• Geolocation API
• HTML DOM API
• Push API
• Service worker API
• See all…

Web API guides

• Using the Web animation API
• Using the Fetch API
• Working with the History API
• Using the Web speech API
• Using web workers

All All web technology

Technologies

• Accessibility
• HTTP
• URI
• Web extensions
• WebAssembly
• WebDriver
• See all…

Topics

• Media
• Performance
• Privacy
• Security
• Progressive web apps

Learn Learn web development

Frontend developer course

• Getting started modules
• Core modules
• MDN Curriculum
• Check out the video course from Scrimba, our partner

Learn HTML

• Structuring content with HTML module

Learn CSS

• CSS styling basics module
• CSS layout module

Learn JavaScript

• Dynamic scripting with JavaScript module

Tools Discover our tools

• Playground

• HTTP Observatory

• Border-image generator

• Border-radius generator

• Box-shadow generator

• Color format converter

• Color mixer

• Shape generator

About Get to know MDN better

• About MDN

• Advertise with us

• Community

• MDN on GitHub

Blog

1. Glossary
2. Network throttling

Network throttling

Network throttling is an intentional slowing down of internet speed. In web performance, network throttling, or network condition emulation, it is used to emulate low bandwidth conditions experienced by likely a large segment of a site's target user base. It's important not to overlook network conditions users experience on mobile. The internet speeds for developers creating web applications in a corporate office building on a powerful computer are generally very fast. As a developer, tech writer, or designer, this is likely your experience. The network speeds of a mobile user accessing that web application, possibly while traveling or in a remote area with poor data plan coverage, will likely be very slow, if they are able to get online at all. Network throttling enables a developer to emulate an experience of a user. Most browser developer tools, such as the browser inspector, provide a function to emulate different network conditions. By emulating your user's experience via network throttling, you can more readily identify and fix load time issues. Browser developer tools generally have network throttling options, to allow you to test your app under slow network conditions. Firefox's developer tools for example have a drop-down menu available in both the Network Monitor and Responsive Design Mode containing network speed options (e.g., Wi-Fi, good 3G, 2G)

In this article

• See also

See also

• Related glossary terms:
  • Synthetic monitoring