How to read your ping test results
Each line of a ping test result is one reply: the round-trip time in milliseconds and the TTL value the reply arrived with. The summary underneath gives the lowest, average and highest round-trip time, plus the share of requests that never came back.
- Round-trip time (RTT) is the time from sending a request to receiving its reply. It's what "ping" means in games.
- Min, avg and max show the spread. A max far above the average points to spikes.
- Packet loss is the percentage of requests with no reply before the timeout.
- Jitter is how much the round-trip time changes from one reply to the next.
- TTL (time to live) drops by one at every router. Linux and macOS usually start at 64 and Windows at 128, so a reply with TTL 116 likely came from a Windows host 12 hops away. Treat it as a hint only.
8.8.8.8 (Google Public DNS) and 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) make good baselines. Both use anycast, so your packets reach the nearest of many data centers.
What is a good ping?
Under 20 ms is excellent, 20 to 50 ms is good for online games, and 50 to 100 ms works fine for browsing, streaming and video calls. Above 100 to 150 ms, fast games start to feel late and people on a call begin to talk over each other. These are common reference values, not a formal standard.
| Ping (round trip) | What it feels like |
|---|---|
| Under 20 ms | No noticeable delay, even in competitive shooters |
| 20 to 50 ms | Good for nearly all online games |
| 50 to 100 ms | Fine for web and video calls; slight lag in fast games |
| 100 to 150 ms | Delay becomes noticeable in games and calls |
| Over 150 ms | Clear lag; conversations need pauses |
The voice standard ITU-T G.114 recommends keeping one-way delay under 150 ms for most voice uses. One way is half a ping, so a 300 ms ping already sits at that limit.
Distance sets a floor no network can beat. Light in optical fiber covers about 200 km per millisecond, so every 100 km of cable adds roughly 1 ms to the round trip. A server 10,000 km away can't answer in under about 100 ms. Low latency means short distance first.
Jitter test and packet loss explained
A jitter test measures how much ping varies between consecutive packets. Replies of 30, 31, 29 and 30 ms have jitter of about 1 ms. Replies of 20, 80, 25 and 90 ms average 54 ms but have jitter near 60 ms, and that connection feels far worse than a steady 60 ms one.
RFC 3393 defines this as IP packet delay variation. Calls suffer most, because audio arrives in a fixed rhythm. A packet arriving too late is dropped, and you hear a gap.
What is packet loss? It's the share of packets that never return. On a healthy wired connection a packet loss test should show 0%. A few percent is enough to cause rubber-banding in games and frozen video in calls.
A result of 100% loss doesn't always mean the host is down. Many firewalls drop ICMP echo requests on purpose. If a website loads but the ping test times out, the host is blocking ping, not offline.
Why is my ping high, and how do I lower it?
High ping usually comes from your local network or from distance. Weak Wi-Fi, other devices downloading at the same time, a game server on another continent, evening peak hours and VPN detours are the usual causes. Fix the local ones first, since you control them.
- Plug in an Ethernet cable. Wi-Fi adds delay and spikes, especially on a busy 2.4 GHz channel.
- Pause cloud backups, game updates and streams on other devices.
- Pick the nearest game server region.
- Restart the router, and turn on QoS if it has one.
- Turn off the VPN and compare.
To measure your own connection, run ping from your computer. On Windows, open Command Prompt and type ping -n 10 8.8.8.8, or ping -t 8.8.8.8 to ping until you press Ctrl+C. On macOS and Linux, open Terminal and type ping -c 10 8.8.8.8. The command measures the path from your device, Wi-Fi included, which is what matters for gaming.
Ping test vs speed test
A ping test measures delay, while a speed test measures bandwidth: how many megabits per second you can download and upload. The two are independent. A 1 Gbps plan can still have high ping, and a 20 Mbps line can have excellent ping to a nearby server.
Geostationary satellite internet shows the gap: the satellite orbits 35,786 km up, so a request and reply cover over 140,000 km, close to half a second at light speed.
Ping also says nothing about a specific service. A host can answer ping while its web port is closed, or block ping while the website works. To test a service, check if a port is open. When ping to a site seems slow, find where a website's server is located; a server on another continent can't reply quickly. If ping looks normal but Steam won't connect from Vietnam, see whether Steam is blocked in Vietnam.
Frequently asked questions
Is 100 ms ping good?
For browsing, streaming and most video calls, 100 ms is fine and you won't notice it. For fast games such as shooters, it's on the high side, and hits start to register late. To a server in your own country, 100 ms points to a local problem.
Why does my ping test show 100% packet loss when the website loads fine?
The server, or a firewall in front of it, ignores ICMP echo requests. Many hosting providers and large websites block ping to cut down on scanning and floods, while still serving pages on ports 80 and 443. Ping 1.1.1.1 to confirm your own connection works, and use a port check to test the website itself.
Is ping the same as latency?
Nearly. Latency is the delay for data to cross a network, and ping is the most common way to measure it: the round-trip time of an ICMP echo request and reply, defined in RFC 792. Games show their own ping, measured to the game server.
Does a faster internet plan lower ping?
Usually not. A higher plan adds bandwidth, but ping depends on distance, line type and congestion. Moving from ADSL or mobile data to fiber can lower it. Upgrading from 300 Mbps to 1 Gbps on the same fiber line rarely changes ping by more than a few milliseconds.
Does this ping test run from my computer?
Web pages can't send ICMP packets, because browsers don't let scripts open raw network sockets. An online ping test that uses ICMP therefore runs on a server and measures the path from that server to your target, not from your device. To measure your own line, use the ping command above or a browser-based speed test.