What is ping?#
Ping is like shouting into a valley and hearing the echo. You send a small packet to a server and measure how many thousandths of a second it takes for the reply to come back. The time is expressed in milliseconds (ms). A ping of 20 is better than 200.
Ping is different from speed#
Internet speed says how much data moves per second, but ping says how long each round trip takes. You can have a high-speed connection with high ping, like satellite, and the other way around.
What raises ping?#
- Physical distance to the server, for example playing on a server in another continent.
- Weak or congested Wi-Fi.
- A long or heavily loaded route through the carrier.
- A heavy download on the same line at the same time.
Where you encounter it#
Gamers know it best, since high ping means "lag". In video calls, delay makes people talk over each other. Site administrators also use the ping command to check whether a server is reachable.
How do we run a ping?#
On Windows, open Command Prompt and type ping google.com. You will see several lines of replies with times in milliseconds. If no reply comes, either the connection is down or the server has disabled replies to ping.
Common mistake#
No reply to a ping does not always mean the server is down; many servers deliberately do not respond to it.