A developer is provided with an emulation tool, which approximates speed conditions of an application executing on a target device, for example a MIDlet executing on a mobile information device, by matching network operations of a development platform to the lesser performance capabilities of the target device. The developer is thereby enabled to optimize an application's network usage early in its development. The time required to perform communications operations in the development environment is increased sufficiently to permit an application developer to more accurately emulate the target device.