Network simulation?

[jackgart]

I’m not a network guy and I’m hoping that someone who is, can give me a sanity check on something I’d like to do, or tell me if there is a better way of doing it.

I have an ESP32 based weather station that updates from openweathermap.org every 30 minutes. Intermittently, a few days to a week or so, it either stops updating or it reboots and will not reconnect. The weather station is connected to openweathermap via a commercial cable modem/router.

What I’d like to do is to simulate the server and modem/router with another ESP32 sending dummy messages to the client and log any client errors. That way I can hopefully simulate network problems and better understand network errors and how to work around them. Then, I can add that logging to my weather station and see causing my intermittent errors.

Does this make sense? Is there a better way of doing it?

One further note, I’m not asking for someone to solve my problem; I’m asking if my simulation idea (both the server and router running on the same ESP32) makes sense or is there a better way of doing it, so that I can solve it myself.

Thanks,
Jack

[lbernstone]

https://www.wokwi.com

I think that you will probably be better off sitting with a real esp32 and a router, and trying to generate network errors. The likely cause of the issue is that you have a loop somewhere that has no way to time out when the network connection or session fails. Check to see if there is some way to get into an infinite loop in your code.

[jackgart]

Thanks. I'll take your suggestion.

Jack