Author Topic: What is a good ping?  (Read 32716 times)

Offline Reuben

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What is a good ping?
« on: December 30, 2007, 01:10:59 PM »
Many people have asked me this question and asked me to interpret their ping results.

When analyzing pings you want to see three things:

1. Consistency (that means a ping that does not fluctuate).
2. Latency (that means a low ping/fast response)
3. Low loss (that means none of the data gets lost on the way, if you get more than 5% loss, then it's not good)


LOSS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR HERE WHICH MEANS ALTHOUGH YOU MAY HAVE GOOD CONSISTENCY AND LOW LATENCY, A HIGH LOSS WILL NEGATE ALL OF THIS.


A benchmark we often use is a ping to bbc.co.uk since they are a neutral provider, a worldwide news network, and is in the same geographical location as many of our servers.

bbc.co.uk:

A good ping is around 300 ms and at most mid 400s.

An example OK ping report is as follows:

Only 6 pings are taken in this example for brevity. You might want to use up to 30-50 pings to get a more accurate report.

You can do this by typing ping bbc.co.uk -n 30 in your command line.

Windows XP: Start, Run, type cmd, type ping bbc.co.uk -n 30
Windows Vista: Start, in the text box below type cmd, type ping bbc.co.uk -n 30

Quote
G:\>ping bbc.co.uk -t

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.131] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.58.224.131: bytes=32 time=455ms TTL=107
Reply from 212.58.224.131: bytes=32 time=451ms TTL=107
Reply from 212.58.224.131: bytes=32 time=454ms TTL=107
Reply from 212.58.224.131: bytes=32 time=455ms TTL=107
Reply from 212.58.224.131: bytes=32 time=451ms TTL=107
Reply from 212.58.224.131: bytes=32 time=450ms TTL=107

Ping statistics for 212.58.224.131:
    Packets: Sent = 6, Received = 6, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 450ms, Maximum = 455ms, Average = 452ms

Results:
Consistency = Variation of 5 ms only
Latency = 452 ms
Loss = 0%


A ping of around 400 ms or lower is acceptable. Important thing is the consistency and the low loss rate:

Second test is a ping to one of our UK servers

Quote
Pinging 92.48.100.10 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=353ms TTL=49
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=343ms TTL=48
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=350ms TTL=49
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=355ms TTL=49
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=353ms TTL=48
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=355ms TTL=49
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=351ms TTL=48
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=346ms TTL=48
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=351ms TTL=49
Reply from 92.48.100.10: bytes=32 time=351ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 92.48.100.10:
    Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 343ms, Maximum = 355ms, Average = 350ms

Results:
Consistency = Variation of 12 ms
Latency = 350 ms
Loss = 0%


A connection showing these characteristics of low loss, reasonable latency and little fluctuation in latency would have no problems getting max speed on our VPN servers.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2010, 12:14:04 AM by Reuben »
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