What Is Ping? Meaning, Good Numbers and How to Lower It

Open an online game and there's a small number in a corner of the screen: 38 ms. Open a terminal, type ping google.com, and you get four lines that end in time=14ms. Both numbers are ping.

Ping is the time a small message takes to get from your device to another computer and back, measured in milliseconds. The lower it is, the faster your connection reacts. At 20 ms a click feels instant. At 200 ms your character answers a fifth of a second late, and everyone else on the server already knows where you were.

What is ping?

The word has two meanings, and people mix them up.

Ping the tool is a command built into Windows, macOS, Linux and your router's admin page. You give it an address, it sends a small test message, and it tells you whether anything answered.

Ping the number is the result: how many milliseconds passed between sending the message and getting the answer. When someone says "my ping is 80", they mean that number. Technically it's a measurement of latency, the delay on the path between you and the other end, counted there and back. Engineers say round-trip time, or RTT.

One millisecond is a thousandth of a second.

How ping works

Ping uses a small part of the internet's plumbing called ICMP, the Internet Control Message Protocol, defined in RFC 792 back in 1981. It works in three steps:

1. Your device sends an ICMP echo request to the address you picked, and starts a timer.
2. The other machine, if it's up and willing, sends back an echo reply.
3. When the reply arrives, the timer stops. The time on the clock is your ping.

That's all there is to it. Microsoft's documentation for the command describes it as the primary TCP/IP command for troubleshooting connectivity and reachability.

The tool is older than most people expect. Mike Muuss wrote it in December 1983 while chasing a strange fault on the network at the US Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, and he describes it as "a little thousand-line hack that I wrote in an evening". He named it after the sound of sonar: you send out a pulse and time the echo. You'll sometimes see PING explained as "Packet InterNet Groper", but according to Muuss it isn't an acronym at all.

Here's what the tool prints. This is an example from Windows:

C:\> ping 1.1.1.1

Pinging 1.1.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=58
Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=58
Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=58
Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 1.1.1.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 15ms, Average = 14ms

• time=14ms is the ping for that one message.
• Lost = 0 (0% loss) means every message came back. Lost messages are a problem of their own, and they hurt games more than a slightly higher ping does.
• Minimum, Maximum and Average show how steady the connection is. A big gap between minimum and maximum is jitter, covered below.
• TTL=58 is how many more routers the message could have passed through before being dropped. You can ignore it for now.

macOS and Linux print almost the same thing, but they keep pinging until you press Ctrl+C, and the summary line reads min/avg/max.

Ping vs latency vs jitter vs speed

These words get used as synonyms. They aren't, and the difference explains why a fast connection can still feel laggy.

Bandwidth is how wide the road is. Ping is how long the road is. A 1 Gbps plan doesn't make the road shorter, which is why you can have a huge download speed and still rubber-band in a match. Games send small packets, so they care about delay and consistency far more than capacity. If your speed itself is the problem, start with Why Is My Internet So Slow?.

Jitter is the one people forget. If your ping bounces between 20 and 120 ms, the average looks fine and the game feels terrible. Baeldung's networking guide puts acceptable jitter at around 30 ms or less.

What is a good ping?

Lower is better, and the answer depends on what you're doing:

These bands are a rule of thumb. Game developers set their own limits, and some servers kick players above a ping cap.

Two things set the floor under your ping, and you can't negotiate with either.

Distance. Light in a fibre-optic cable travels at about two thirds of its speed in a vacuum, roughly 200,000 km per second. That works out to around 100 km of distance for every millisecond of round trip. New York to London is about 5,500 km in a straight line, so the best case is 55 ms. In practice it's about 70: that's the monthly average Verizon publishes for its own New York to London link, measured with ICMP pings. Austria's telecom regulator makes the same point on its ping FAQ: typical connections sit between 5 and 30 ms, while a server in Japan is about 280 ms away from Austria.

Hops. Every router the message passes adds a little delay, and so does every busy link along the way.

A last wrinkle for gamers. The number in the corner of a game is measured by the game itself, to its own server, usually over UDP. It can be smoothed, and it can differ by a few milliseconds from what the ping command says about the same machine. Use the in-game number to judge how the game feels and the command to find out where the delay comes from.

How to test your ping

Windows (Start, type cmd, Enter):

ping -n 20 1.1.1.1

macOS and Linux (Terminal):

ping -c 20 1.1.1.1

Twenty messages, not four. One reply says nothing about stability, and the average of twenty does. 1.1.1.1 is Cloudflare's public DNS server and a decent neutral target. To test a game, ping the game server's address instead if you can find it (many games publish regional server addresses, or you can read it from the in-game network panel).

Phones don't have a terminal, but most speed test apps report ping, and so does the game.

Find out whose fault it is

When ping is high, run the same test against three targets, in this order:

1. Your router, usually 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1. The address is on a sticker on the router, or listed as "Default Gateway" under ipconfig on Windows. On a cable you should see 1 to 2 ms. On Wi-Fi, a few milliseconds with occasional spikes.
2. 1.1.1.1. This adds your internet provider and the open internet.
3. The game server or website you actually care about.

Where the jump happens tells you who to bother. A bad number to the router means the trouble is inside your home: Wi-Fi, cable, router. A good number to the router and a bad one to 1.1.1.1 points at your provider. A good number to both and a bad one to the game points at the route to that specific server, or at the server itself.

Reading the error messages

A timeout doesn't prove a site is down. It only proves you got no reply to a ping.

The test most speed tests skip: ping under load

Your ping at rest can be perfect and still fall apart the moment anyone in the house uploads a video. Check it:

1. On Windows, run ping -t 1.1.1.1. On macOS or Linux, plain ping 1.1.1.1 already runs until you stop it.
2. While it runs, start a big download or upload, or a video call.
3. Watch the numbers. If 15 ms turns into 300 ms or more, the router is queueing traffic faster than it can send it. The name for this is bufferbloat.

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Bufferbloat is common on home routers, and the usual fix is a setting called SQM, or "smart queue management", where your router supports it. Capping the speed a little below your plan's maximum helps too.

Why is my ping high?

Roughly in order of how often each is the cause:

• Wi-Fi. Walls, distance and a busy channel add delay and jitter. A cable removes most of it.
• Someone is using the connection. Cloud backups, game downloads and a 4K stream all share the same queue.
• Far away server. Choosing a closer region in the game's settings is often the whole fix.
• Overloaded or old router. Restart it. If the problem is back within a day, the router is a suspect.
• Your provider's route. Some providers send traffic to certain servers on long or congested paths. You can prove it with the three-target test above, and send the numbers to support.
• Background programs. Updates, sync clients and browser tabs with live video all use the connection.

How to lower it, in order of effort:

1. Plug in an Ethernet cable.
2. Pause anything uploading or downloading while you play.
3. Pick the nearest server or region in the game.
4. Restart the router and modem.
5. If you must use Wi-Fi, move to the 5 GHz band (or 6 GHz) and sit closer to the router.
6. Turn on SQM if your router has it.
7. If the router is fine and 1.1.1.1 is slow, ask your provider about the route. Bring your numbers.

Does a VPN change your ping?

A VPN adds a stop on the way. Instead of going straight to the game server, your traffic goes to the VPN server first, then on to the destination, and the reply takes the same way back. More distance and one more hop mean more milliseconds. That's the default result, and it's why a VPN can slow your connection down.

How much depends on where the VPN server is. A server in your own city adds very little. A server on another continent adds the whole trip. The protocol matters less than the detour, though a lean one such as WireGuard keeps its own overhead small (we compare them in WireGuard vs OpenVPN).

The VPN can also lower your ping, in one situation. If your provider reaches a certain server over a roundabout or congested route, the VPN provider's route might be shorter. That's uncommon, and nobody can promise it. You find out by measuring:

1. Disconnect the VPN and run ping -n 20 <game server or 1.1.1.1>. Write down the average and the maximum.
2. Connect to the VPN server closest to you, and run the same test.
3. Connect to a server near the game server's location, and run it a third time.
4. Compare the averages, and look at the maximum too. A VPN that is 6 ms slower but steadier can feel better than a faster connection that spikes.

Do it at the same time of day, because your own evening traffic changes the result.

We make a VPN, so a note on what it can't do: it won't fix a weak Wi-Fi signal, a busy router or a game server on the other side of the planet. If the first test, the one to your router, is bad, switching a VPN on is not the answer. Fix the local link first. If you want to run the experiment above, Atomic VPN uses WireGuard by default and has 6,500+ servers in 88+ countries, so a server close to the game is usually available. More on gaming setups in VPN for Gaming, and on what the tunnel does to your traffic in What Is a VPN Tunnel?.

Other things "ping" can mean

• "Ping me" in a work chat means send me a message or get my attention.
• A ping on a monitoring service means it checks regularly whether your website or server answers. The idea is the same as the command, with a schedule and an alert on top.
• In a smart home or on a network scanner, "pinging a device" means sending the same echo request to see whether it's online. It's also how you find an address that doesn't answer: see What Is an IP Address? for how addresses work.

FAQ

What is ping in simple terms?

Ping is how long a message takes to travel from your device to a server and back, in milliseconds. It also names the tool that measures it.

Is a high or low ping better?

Low. A low ping means a short delay between your action and the server's response.

What is a good ping for gaming?

Under 50 ms is good for most games. Under 30 ms is what competitive shooters want. Above 100 ms, fast-paced games start to feel unfair.

Is 100 ping bad?

It depends on the game. For a card game or an RPG it's fine. For a shooter or fighting game it's noticeable, because your inputs reach the server about a tenth of a second late.

What does ping stand for?

Nothing, officially. Its author Mike Muuss named it after the sound of sonar. The expansion "Packet InterNet Groper" is a later backronym.

Is ping the same as latency?

Almost. Latency is the delay on the path. Ping is the test, and the number it gives you. People use the words interchangeably, and in everyday use that's fine.

Does download speed affect ping?

Not directly. A faster plan doesn't shorten the route. Very slow or saturated connections can raise ping, because messages wait in a queue.

Why is my ping high when my internet is fast?

Because speed and ping measure different things. Common causes are Wi-Fi, a far-away server, a busy router, or something uploading in the background. The three-target test above shows which one.

Can I ping a website?

Yes. Run ping example.com. Some sites ignore ping requests on purpose, so "Request timed out" doesn't mean the site is down.

Is it legal to ping someone's IP address?

A single ping is an ordinary network request, and any machine on the internet can send one. Flooding a target with thousands of them to knock it offline is an attack, and illegal in most places.

Can a VPN lower my ping?

Sometimes, if your provider's route is poor. More often it adds a few milliseconds. Test with and without it, using 20 pings each time.

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