diff --git a/tests/FILEFORMAT b/tests/FILEFORMAT
index 131d14511..fb162a358 100644
--- a/tests/FILEFORMAT
+++ b/tests/FILEFORMAT
@@ -124,6 +124,7 @@ auth_required   if this is set and a POST/PUT is made without auth, the
                 server will NOT wait for the full request body to get sent
 idle            do nothing after receiving the request, just "sit idle"
 stream          continuously send data to the client, never-ending
+writedelay: [secs] delay this amount between reply packets
 pipe: [num]     tell the server to expect this many HTTP requests before
                 sending back anything, to allow pipelining tests
 skip: [num]     instructs the server to ignore reading this many bytes from a PUT
diff --git a/tests/data/test1117 b/tests/data/test1117
index 25737bcd2..5b696112b 100644
--- a/tests/data/test1117
+++ b/tests/data/test1117
@@ -13,9 +13,10 @@ Range
 HTTP/1.1 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable
 Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:49:00 GMT
 Accept-Ranges: bytes
-Content-Length: 6
+Content-Length: 115
 
-Error
+This is a long error message that is large enough that the test server is
+guaranteed to split it into two packets.
 </data>
 
 <data1>
@@ -28,6 +29,10 @@ Content-Type: text/plain
 
 partial body
 </data1>
+
+<servercmd>
+writedelay: 1
+</servercmd>
 </reply>
 
 # Client-side
@@ -49,8 +54,10 @@ HTTP with invalid range then another URL
 HTTP/1.1 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable
 Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:49:00 GMT
 Accept-Ranges: bytes
-Content-Length: 6
+Content-Length: 115
 
+This is a long error message that is large enough that the test server is
+guaranteed to split it into two packets.
 HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
 Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:49:01 GMT
 Accept-Ranges: bytes
diff --git a/tests/server/sws.c b/tests/server/sws.c
index 8a93b3b8d..a4c040bd2 100644
--- a/tests/server/sws.c
+++ b/tests/server/sws.c
@@ -105,6 +105,8 @@ struct httprequest {
   size_t cl;      /* Content-Length of the incoming request */
   bool digest;    /* Authorization digest header found */
   bool ntlm;      /* Authorization ntlm header found */
+  int writedelay; /* if non-zero, delay this number of seconds between
+		      writes in the response */
   int pipe;       /* if non-zero, expect this many requests to do a "piped"
                      request/response */
   int skip;       /* if non-zero, the server is instructed to not read this
@@ -435,6 +437,10 @@ static int ProcessRequest(struct httprequest *req)
             logmsg("instructed to skip this number of bytes %d", num);
             req->skip = num;
           }
+          else if(1 == sscanf(cmd, "writedelay: %d", &num)) {
+            logmsg("instructed to delay %d secs between packets", num);
+            req->writedelay = num;
+          }
           else {
             logmsg("funny instruction found: %s", cmd);
           }
@@ -745,6 +751,7 @@ static int get_request(curl_socket_t sock, struct httprequest *req)
   req->ntlm = FALSE;
   req->pipe = 0;
   req->skip = 0;
+  req->writedelay = 0;
   req->rcmd = RCMD_NORMALREQ;
   req->prot_version = 0;
   req->pipelining = FALSE;
@@ -1015,6 +1022,10 @@ static int send_doc(curl_socket_t sock, struct httprequest *req)
     else {
       logmsg("Sent off %zd bytes", written);
     }
+    if (req->writedelay) {
+      logmsg("Pausing %d seconds", req->writedelay);
+      sleep(req->writedelay);
+    }
     /* write to file as well */
     fwrite(buffer, 1, (size_t)written, dump);
     if(got_exit_signal)