What Is A Good Ping? Deep Dive Into Latency - Robot Powered Home

You might have noticed when you were playing an online game; your inputs were slightly delayed. Maybe not by a lot, but you see that slight delay anyway. On the other hand, if you are not that big of a gamer, you might have noticed it somewhere else.

You can even see this word in speed tests, where they show you how fast your internet is, along with this word and a number in milliseconds. Here, you will see exactly what it means, and its implications when gaming or doing non-gaming tasks on the internet.

In a competitive gaming setup, a good ping would lie between 20-50 milliseconds. Since ping is a measure of how long data takes on a round trip, you want this to be as low as possible.

What is a Ping?

Ping is the round trip time that a message takes to complete the journey from your computer to a server and back. So basically, it is the time that takes from you typing in Google in the address bar of your browser to you seeing the home page of Google. The name is derived from military sonar, where the rebounded pulse makes a “ping” noise when something is detected underwater.

Ping is usually measured in milliseconds, and you would ideally want this number to be as low as possible.

What is “Low Ping and “High Ping”?

The terms “low ping” and “high ping” indicate the level of ping, but ping does not have to be low all the time to get the most out of your internet connection. Regular use does not require low values of ping, but in time-sensitive applications like competitive gaming, it is crucial.

Ping can introduce something called packet loss. A packet is a segment of information, and it is the primary method of how data is transmitted through the internet.

When a server or your computer takes too long to respond to a message, the packets containing that message is dropped, eternally lost to time. That is how the internet works and corrects itself to any congestion issues.

And since with a higher ping, you would take more time to respond to the message, and as a result, packet loss occurs. But again, this is only a significant issue when you are gaming or on a video call and mostly harmless when watching a movie or something similar.

What is Latency?

Latency is a more technical term for ping, and it means the time that passes between you pressing a button and the expected response. One of the major causes of high latency is distance. As distance increases between you and the server, the time it takes for a message to travel increases.

For example, if you were in Seattle and connected to a server in Dubai, your ping would suffer, and message delivery will slow down. The exact time is 193.48ms, according to WonderNetwork. The time may seem very low, but that is enough to make a difference in time-sensitive applications like gaming.

What Does Lag Mean?

Lag is a more effect-side term for latency. In gaming, if you have a high ping, you will feel a noticeable delay or a lag in between actions. This is more of a gaming-focused term, and it essentially means the same.

Ping doesn’t matter in slower games like turn-based strategy games where timing isn’t all that important, but you might feel it in a more fast-paced game like a first-person shooter or a real-time strategy game.

Here, packet loss also figures in and contributes to the feeling of lag as much as high ping does, resulting in the player character “teleporting” and outright missing events in the game.

What is a Good Ping for Gaming?

As long as the latency in milliseconds remains less than 500ms, it is good enough. A perfect ping would lie around the 20-50ms range, and most gamers will be satisfied with that number. In the case of packet loss, it should remain at 0% to prevent any unfortunate loss of data.

If ping goes above 50ms and upwards of 150ms plus, things start to play differently. Jittery controls and unresponsive inputs are just some of the bad effects of high ping in gaming, and packet loss adds to this issue with the player character teleporting all over and even more lag.

What is a Good Ping for Broadband?

Ping, or latency, is not that big of a deal to a broadband connection. The internet is set up so that the receiver can retrieve any lost data by asking the sender for it again. But this cannot happen fast enough while gaming, and that’s why you see this issue primarily in gaming or video calls.

For broadband, speed and bandwidth are more of a priority than ping because it matters less how fast the server or you respond but the amount of data you or the server can transfer in the shortest possible time.

But ping is still a factor when you consider the growing use of meeting apps and services, so a ping of less than 100ms is good enough.

How do you Test Your Ping?

Ping tests are available all over the internet, but I’d recommend using speedtest.net to get a general idea of your ping. For individual games, go to GameServerPing and run the test for the game you want. You can test the ping in-game by going into the settings window of the game and looking for something that says “Show performance metrics” or something similar.

Connect to a server and check your ping. You will get an idea of how your network is performing.

For a general bandwidth test with no frills or ads, use fast.com.

Factors that Affect Your Ping

Internet service provider

One of the key points is that your internet connection travels through the servers of the ISP you are contracted with. Therefore, if an issue arises where their servers cannot respond to requests fast enough, your ping can increase.

Connection speed

Even though this issue automatically resolves itself if your internet speeds are 10mbps or faster, your connection speed still figures as a small part of your ping.

Low Bandwidth

Bandwidth becomes a problem if you are using your internet connection with other devices. If the other devices hog bandwidth, there’s nothing you can do except to stop using that bandwidth hog device. Until then, your ping will remain high.

Firewall

Since you connect to lots of servers when browsing the internet, some of these servers might fall under the criteria that the firewall blocks. This can increase your ping in only some cases, but it is still a factor.

Your geographical location

If you are situated a considerable distance away from the server, it increases the time taken for messages to travel between you and the server due to the number of devices that you need to pass through as well as the physical distance itself.

How to Lower Your Ping?

Since there are quite a few reasons why you may have a high ping, there are solutions to these. To prevent ping “spikes” caused by physical distance, select a server closest to you.

If you have a download running in the background, it may hog the bandwidth, thereby increasing your ping. Close any background applications that may take up memory or bandwidth that you can use.

Turn off updates. While this seems counterintuitive, and it would be best to run on the latest versions of your software, the update itself may start downloading at inopportune times and increase your ping.

Lastly, use a wired connection. If you are on a laptop connected to Wi-Fi and having ping or packet loss issues, try using an ethernet connection. Most laptops have an ethernet port, and most LAN cables like the [amazon link=”B07QLCMNVQ” title=”DbillionDa Cat8 ethernet cable” /] can work.

Try To Have Low Ping While Gaming

We saw what latency or ping could do if you are a competitive gamer and saw why latency occurs. However, one of the factors that you might overlook is getting a router explicitly designed for gaming. These routers focus on maximum performance regarding latency and packet loss and come with features that can enhance your gaming experience.

Investing in magic pill “ping killer” apps is a waste of time because you can do what these apps do yourself, as we saw today. To completely insulate yourself from any ping issues, try to upgrade your internet plan so that bandwidth won’t restrict your ping.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is 0 ping possible?

Zero ping is the perfect scenario where there is absolutely no time delay between request and response. Unfortunately, since this is an ideal case and doesn’t factor in the laws of physics, data packets actually take time to travel and therefore is not possible.

Why is my ping so high, but my internet is good?

Speed is not the only factor that ping depends on. Your internet may be good, but something might be hogging all the bandwidth and not allowing the program in question to achieve a good ping.

Does router affect ping?

A better router can improve latency but to a certain degree. The bottleneck at your ISP will remain unless you upgrade your internet plan.

Can VPN reduce ping?

A VPN is very unlikely to reduce ping because even if you successfully manage to connect to a country where the server lies, the data still has to pass through the VPN provider’s server. In some cases, the path it takes through a VPN might be longer than the regular path.