What Is Ping? How to Check Ping and Network Speed

You have probably heard the word "ping" at least once, and heard that it is used to check network speed. But do you know what ping is and how to check it? If not, let's find out quickly together.

What is ping?

Ping is short for Paсket Internet Grоper. It is a value used to check the speed of the connection between 2 remote devices. It is calculated by measuring the total time it takes for one device to send a standard data packet to another device and get it back.

Ping also estimates the round-trip delay for sending a data packet, as well as the rate of packets that may be lost between the two machines.

The larger the time, the slower the internet connection's ping. Checking your ping also lets you confirm whether the data you send runs into technical errors.

What do ping values mean?

When you click a page to read the news, listen to music and so on, it takes a moment for the page to load, right? That delay is called latency. The ping command helps measure your browsing speed and tells you the quality of your network service.

See also: How to check your website's speed

If you often play online games, ping is probably a familiar number. Many games show it in a corner of the screen so you can see your connection speed. If it reaches hundreds of ms, your game will surely lag. For example, a player with a low ping of 50 ms will have a better gaming experience than a player with a ping of 250 ms.

Ping is very easy to notice in online games. For example, with a ping of 20ms you have very low latency, and your actions seem to happen instantly in the game. With a higher ping such as 200ms, your actions are noticeably delayed. You certainly cannot keep up with the other players.

When your game feels sluggish and your ping is very high, the network connection is clearly the cause. It is not the machine's specs, as some people mistakenly think.

How does the ping command work?

As for how it works, the ping command on your device sends a signal through intermediate nodes to the device whose connection you want to check.

If that device receives the signal, it replies immediately. The time for the signal to go there and back is then calculated precisely and shown in the ping result.

If the ping cannot reach its destination, the user will see error messages on the screen.

How do you check ping most accurately?

On Windows

To check on a device running Windows, just follow these simple steps:

1. First, press Windows + R to open CMD.
2. Next, type "cmd" and press OK.
3. Once CMD is open, type the command line to check ping and press OK.

Note that each ISP is different, so you need to enter the IP address that matches the network service your household currently uses. The IP addresses of current ISPs in Vietnam are:

• Viettel network: 203.113.131.1
• FPT network IP: 210.245.31.130
• VNPT network IP: 203.162.4.190

Finally, run the ping check.

On macOS

• Open Spotlight on the screen using the magnifying glass icon.
• In the Spotlight search box in the middle of the screen, type "Network utility" to search.
• Click the Ping tab at the top of the window.
• Enter the address you want to ping, then click Ping.
• All that is left is to look at the result.

Check ping by IP address from an iPhone

Currently, iOS has no built-in app that lets you run a ping test. Instead, you need to install a dedicated app for checking network connections. Some of the most popular are Ping – network utility, Pingify and Network Ping Lite.

Check on an Android phone

Like iOS, Android has no built-in way to ping routers or other servers by default. Instead, there are many apps on Google Play that let you do this. Some names you can use are Ping, Ping&Net and PingTools Network Utilities.

Of these, Ping and Ping&Net offer basic ping options. PingTools Network Utilities is a much more advanced app. It comes with many useful network diagnostic tools that give detailed information about the connection you are using. You can even check network usage for each app on your phone, scan network ports, check the owner of a domain, and more.

What do ping values mean?

After you run the ping checks above, your device returns a result. But reading and understanding the result is not easy. Most of us cannot read it without experience or some knowledge of information technology.

In general, the "time=…ms" value is the most important. It shows exactly the speed of your network connection when you are online:

• Less than 30ms: Excellent ping, good for online gaming.
• Between 30 and 50ms: Average, does not affect gaming.
• Between 50 and 100ms: A little slow, does not affect browsing websites. Games lag quite a bit, though.
• Between 100 and 500ms: Slow ping, with a big effect on both browsing websites and gaming.
• More than 500ms: Everything you do on the internet becomes noticeably slow.

Also, if you get "Request time оut" it means there is no response. That means your internet connection is interrupted or disconnected. In that case, check your connected devices.

We hope this has helped you learn more about what ping is. You now also know how to check ping on your machine and what the values mean. Enjoy your games!

See also: Optimize website size to speed up your site