Ping Test Accuracy

Dark Nex

Below are a speed test and a ping test. On the speed test, my ping is 38. On the ping test, my ping is 13 at most if you take the jitter into account. So my question is simple. Which of these two pings is actually my ping? They are both tested on the same server.

brianwalshcork

They are both your ping!
At 4:37 PM your ping repsonse time was 38 ms, at 4:39, it was 12 ms.

I doubt that they were to the same server, not that it really matters. Ping is only gives the result at the instant when it is executed, and only to the sepcified IP - in this case an unnamed server in Dublin.

If you are gaming, then you'll be more interested in the ping reponse time to the server that is acutally hosting your game, and at the time that you are playing the game (mornings, evenings etc).

For what it's worth, I'd consider 12 ms very good, and 38 acceptable for a standard home broadband connection.

Brian

Dark Nex

brianwalshcork wrote: »

They are both your ping!
At 4:37 PM your ping repsonse time was 38 ms, at 4:39, it was 12 ms.

I doubt that they were to the same server, not that it really matters. Ping is only gives the result at the instant when it is executed, and only to the sepcified IP - in this case an unnamed server in Dublin.

If you are gaming, then you'll be more interested in the ping reponse time to the server that is acutally hosting your game, and at the time that you are playing the game (mornings, evenings etc).

For what it's worth, I'd consider 12 ms very good, and 38 acceptable for a standard home broadband connection.

Brian

Thanks for your response but I find it hard to believe that my ping could change that much in 2 mins. Surely that would make the connection ridiculously unstable. The ping test always gives a lower ping around 12-14 while the speedtest always gives a higher ping of around 37-39.

brianwalshcork

Dark Nex wrote: »

Thanks for your response but I find it hard to believe that my ping could change that much in 2 mins. Surely that would make the connection ridiculously unstable. The ping test always gives a lower ping around 12-14 while the speedtest always gives a higher ping of around 37-39.

Agreed, that's why I don't think that they are to the same server / IP, especially since you said that the speetest is always higher.

It looks like the IP being used for the pingtest.net is a small number of hops from you - and therefore reponds quicker, while the speedtest.net IP is more than likely on another network and your packets have to pass through congested routers.

Dark Nex

Also, I was wondering if pinging the ISP's website meant anything?

When I ping eircom.net from my command prompt I get 11.
When I ping magnet.ie from my command prompt I get 12.
When I ping UPC.ie from my command prompt I get 29.

Does that mean anything in relation to what my ping would be like with the respective ISPs?

Karmafaerie

Dark Nex wrote: »

Also, I was wondering if pinging the ISP's website meant anything?

When I ping eircom.net from my command prompt I get 11.
When I ping magnet.ie from my command prompt I get 12.
When I ping UPC.ie from my command prompt I get 29.

Does that mean anything in relation to what my ping would be like with the respective ISPs?

No.

(UPC don't use the same cables sure, and Magnet also offer fiber in certain areas.)

Pinging different websites will always give you varying results and there are loads of different reasons.

If you pinged google, yahoo, bing, etc.... you'd get varying replies also.
It's to do with the route rather than the seperate companies services.



As for the original question.

Try www.speedtest.magnet.ie
You'll probalby get a ping closer to your pingtest.net result there.
I never trust speedtest.net, as it's simply too eratic.

FruitLover

Dark Nex wrote: »

Thanks for your response but I find it hard to believe that my ping could change that much in 2 mins.

It could change that much in 2 seconds, never mind 2 minutes. Depending on routing, even successive packets could take different paths to a destination.

CrazyRabbit

Dark Nex wrote: »

Thanks for your response but I find it hard to believe that my ping could change that much in 2 mins. Surely that would make the connection ridiculously unstable. The ping test always gives a lower ping around 12-14 while the speedtest always gives a higher ping of around 37-39.

When you send a ping to a server, it's like your computer saying 'Hello' to that server, and that server then replies "Hello, I'm here" back. The time it takes to send the 'hello', and get that reply is measured in milliseconds(ms). Anything under 150ms will be fine for most applications. Under 50ms is good for online FPS type games.

Now, in an ideal world, your computer would be directly connected to that server and the response would be practically instantaneous. However, in reality, that 'ping' is actually relayed through many routers before it reaches the server, and the same goes with the reply on the return journey. Now each time a ping is relayed through these routers, there is a tiny delay, which is mostly based on the amount of network traffic being handled at that moment by the router. The combined delay of all the routers, your computer, and the server is the ping result you get in those tests. You can get drastically differing results from 2 different servers.

To make it even more complicated, the routing path can change quite often as network traffic is sent along the fastest available path. E.G, if one of the routers goes down, or is swamped with requests, the ping goes through a different routing path.

If you open a command prompt and type:

tracert www.google.com

...you will get a more detailed view of the routing path and ping results from each hop along the network path.

To get an average ping, open a command prompt and type:

ping -n 20 www.google.com

Replace www.google.com with whatever server you want to test the ping result against.

Be aware that many servers block pings (ICMP traffic), so will time out.

Hope this helps.

Dark Nex

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

When you send a ping to a server, it's like your computer saying 'Hello' to that server, and that server then replies "Hello, I'm here" back. The time it takes to send the 'hello', and get that reply is measured in milliseconds(ms). Anything under 150ms will be fine for most applications. Under 50ms is good for online FPS type games.

Now, in an ideal world, your computer would be directly connected to that server and the response would be practically instantaneous. However, in reality, that 'ping' is actually relayed through many routers before it reaches the server, and the same goes with the reply on the return journey. Now each time a ping is relayed through these routers, there is a tiny delay, which is mostly based on the amount of network traffic being handled at that moment by the router. The combined delay of all the routers, your computer, and the server is the ping result you get in those tests. You can get drastically differing results from 2 different servers.

To make it even more complicated, the routing path can change quite often as network traffic is sent along the fastest available path. E.G, if one of the routers goes down, or is swamped with requests, the ping goes through a different routing path.

If you open a command prompt and type:

tracert www.google.com

...you will get a more detailed view of the routing path and ping results from each hop along the network path.

To get an average ping, open a command prompt and type:

ping -n 20 www.google.com

Replace www.google.com with whatever server you want to test the ping result against.

Be aware that many servers block pings (ICMP traffic), so will time out.

Hope this helps.

Thanks crazy. I'm starting to learn a lot about broadband. I knew a decent amount to begin with but I'm only starting to understand some of the more complex information. On the bright side, I'm a quick learner so you won't have to tell me things twice lol.

bricks

Dark Nex wrote: »

Also, I was wondering if pinging the ISP's website meant anything?

When I ping eircom.net from my command prompt I get 11.
When I ping magnet.ie from my command prompt I get 12.
When I ping UPC.ie from my command prompt I get 29.

Does that mean anything in relation to what my ping would be like with the respective ISPs?

It means magnet and Eircom are hosting their websites in Ireland.
UPC hosts outside Ireland, looks like norway maybe??
Funnily enough the ping from my PC on UPC BB is lower to Eircom.ie than it is to upc.ie