What Is a Good Ping? Jitter Explained and How to Lower Ping

What are ping and jitter?

Ping is the time it takes to send a small piece of data to another computer and get a reply back. Because it covers the trip there and back, it is also called round-trip delay or latency. RFC 2681, which defines how internet delay is measured, describes round-trip delay as the time from when the sender sends the first bit until it receives the last bit of the reply.

Jitter is how much ping varies from one measurement to the next. If ping goes 15 ms, 16 ms, 15 ms, jitter is small. If it goes 15 ms, 45 ms, 20 ms, jitter is large. RFC 3393 calls the difference in delay between consecutive packets "IP packet delay variation" (IPDV). It also notes that the word "jitter" means different things to different people, so the standard avoids it. You can think of jitter in a speed test as the average of these differences in delay.

Download and upload speed tell you how much data can be carried at once. Ping tells you how long it takes to arrive. Think of a road: speed is the number of lanes, and ping is the distance to your destination. Adding lanes does not make the destination any closer. For how to read all four numbers together, see our internet speed guidelines.

Good ping and jitter values

These are the same thresholds used on this site's results screen, and the same numbers appear in our other articles.

A ping of 50 ms or more does not automatically mean your connection is bad. Ping also goes up when the test server is far away or when you are using a VPN. In the next section we calculate the minimum ping set by distance alone.

The minimum ping set by distance (the speed of light)

Light travels more slowly inside optical fiber than in a vacuum. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Recommendation G.114 gives a planning value for the delay of optical fiber transmission of 5 μs (microseconds) per km (the recommendation describes this as a provisional value). That works out to about 200,000 km per second.

Formula: Minimum round trip (ms) = distance (km) × 2 ÷ 200,000 (km/s) × 1,000

The distances are straight-line distances calculated from the latitude and longitude of each city center. These are theoretical values, and real measurements are always higher. Real cables bend along roads and the seabed, and time is added by routers along the way and by the Wi-Fi in your home.

What the table shows is that from Japan to a server on the US West Coast, ping can never go below 88 ms, no matter how good the connection is. The same logic applies anywhere: if you play on a server on another continent, or pick a distant test server, a ping over 100 ms does not necessarily mean something is wrong with your connection.

How this site measures ping, and which server it uses

This site's speed test automatically picks the server with the lowest ping from our own server in Sapporo and 37 public mirrors around the world. In Japan, from Honshu, "Tokyo" is usually selected. If you manually switch to a server in another country, ping goes up by the amount of the extra distance, as shown in the table in the previous section.

The test uses the open-source LibreSpeed. It works as follows (you can confirm this in the source code):

• The browser sends 10 HTTP requests for an empty file on the test server and measures the time until each reply arrives.
• The ping shown is the lowest of these values. The very first request includes time to set up the connection, so it is not used.
• Jitter is the average of the differences between consecutive ping measurements. The calculation gives more weight to sudden large jumps.

Because it measures over HTTP, the result also includes the time the server takes to respond. It can come out slightly higher than the ping command on your computer, which uses a mechanism called ICMP.

Ping in games is a different number

Speed test ping is the value "to the test server." Ping in a game is the value "to the game server," so if the server is somewhere else, the number is different. For example, if the game server is in another country, you might see 10 ms in a speed test but more than 100 ms in the game. For how to think about this for each type of game, see internet speed requirements for gaming.

Using the ping command to test a specific server

If you know the name or IP address of a server, type ping -n 10 address in the Windows Command Prompt, or ping -c 10 address in the Mac Terminal. You will see the round-trip time for 10 attempts. Note that some servers are set up not to respond to the ping command.

What matters for each use

The same ping can have a very different impact depending on what you are doing.

On delay in conversation, ITU-T G.114 says that if one-way delay stays under 150 ms, most applications will see almost no effect on interactivity. It says that more than 400 ms one way is unacceptable for general network planning. One-way delay here means the total time from when you speak until the other person hears it. It includes not only the network ping but also time for things like audio compression.

Connection types and typical ping

Different types of connection tend to show different ping. In general, ping is low on wired fiber, and higher on mobile connections that use radio and on satellite connections that go via space. Even with the same type of connection, it varies a lot by area, equipment and time of day.

• Fiber: With a wired connection, it tends to give low values to test servers in the same country.
• Cable internet: Values vary with the technology used and how congested the network is.
• Mobile and home routers on mobile networks: Signal conditions and cell tower congestion make both ping and jitter more likely to fluctuate.
• Satellite: The distance up to space and back is added. In the ITU-T G.114 planning values, the one-way propagation time between ground stations is 260 ms for a satellite at an altitude of 36,000 km (geostationary) and 12 ms for a satellite at 400 km. The lower the satellite's orbit, the smaller this part of the delay.

How to lower your ping

These are listed roughly in order of biggest effect and lowest cost.

1. Use a wired Ethernet connection: Wi-Fi can add jitter because of radio interference and retransmissions. A cable is an effective way to keep ping stable.
2. Avoid Wi-Fi interference: If you cannot use a cable, move closer to the router, reduce the walls in between, and use the 5 GHz band instead of the 2.4 GHz band, which can get crowded. Also stay away from microwave ovens.
3. Stop other devices that are using the connection: If someone in the household is streaming video, running a large download or backing up to the cloud, data queues up inside the router and ping goes up.
4. Check router settings or replace the router: When a lot of traffic is flowing, the router's internal queue (buffer) can fill up and ping can rise sharply. If your router has QoS (traffic prioritization), try using it to prioritize your game console or meeting traffic. With an old router, replacing it can sometimes help.
5. Turn off your VPN: A VPN routes your traffic through a distant server, which can add that extra distance.
6. Review your connection method or type: If ping only fluctuates in the evening, consider a less congested connection method or a different type of connection.

For a full list of fixes that also covers speed, see how to increase internet speed. Before and after making a change, test several times at the same time of day on the same device and compare. For a step-by-step method, see how to run an accurate speed test.

When ping only gets worse in the evening

If ping and jitter are fine during the day but get worse every evening, the cause is often congestion somewhere between your home and the wider internet, when many people in your area are online at the same time. In that case, changes inside your home may not help much.

It is worth asking your provider whether your plan uses a connection method or equipment that is known to be busy at peak times, and whether a different connection method or plan is available. Keep a record of your test results at different times of day so you can show the pattern clearly.

FAQ

What is a good ping in ms?

Under 20 ms is very good, 20–50 ms is good, and 50 ms or more tends to be a disadvantage in online multiplayer games. However, ping goes up with distance when the test server is far away, so also check where the value is measured to.

What is jitter?

Jitter is how much ping varies. The bigger the differences between consecutive ping measurements, the higher the jitter. Under 10 ms is stable, while 30 ms or more makes call dropouts and game stuttering more likely.

How can I lower my ping?

First switch to a wired Ethernet connection and stop any large transfers running at the same time. If you stay on Wi-Fi, move closer to the router and use the 5 GHz band. If you use a VPN, turning it off may lower your ping.

Why is my ping different in a speed test and in a game?

Because they measure to different places. A speed test measures to a nearby test server, while a game measures to the game server. The farther away the server, the higher the ping, because of the limit set by the speed of light.

Why does ping go up when I choose a test server in another country?

Because it is farther away. Light in optical fiber travels at about 200,000 km per second, so a round trip from Japan to the US West Coast takes about 88 ms even in theory. It does not mean your connection is faulty.

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