The ping line
Send pings and watch them travel
Every dot is one ping, out to the server and back. It's slowed right down so you can follow it. The numbers underneath are what a real ping test would print.
Clean connection. Pings arrive steadily and none go missing. The only delay left is distance and the equipment along the way.
A simulation built on typical figures. Your own numbers come from a test on your connection: run one on our NBN speed test page.
How your connection works
What is ping?Latency, jitter and packet loss, shown
Ping is the time a message takes to get from your device to a server and back, in milliseconds (ms). Latency is that delay. Jitter is how much it wobbles from one message to the next. Packet loss is the messages that never come back. The connection below is a working simulation. Change it and watch each one happen.
Ping
What is ping?
A test that times how long a message takes to reach a server and come back. To a Sydney server on a healthy NBN connection, under 20 ms is normal.
Distance sets the floor. Every 100 km of cable adds about 1 ms to your ping, counting the trip there and back. No plan, router or technician can beat it.
| Server in | Cable route, about | Light alone | Typical ping |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 50 km | 0.5 ms | about 8 ms |
| Melbourne | 1,000 km | 10 ms | about 17 ms |
| Perth | 3,900 km | 39 ms | about 50 ms |
| Singapore | 6,500 km | 65 ms | about 90 ms |
| Los Angeles | 12,000 km | 120 ms | about 146 ms |
Cable routes and typical pings are approximate, from Sydney. Your own will vary with your connection and your provider's routes.
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Ping is a test. Your device sends a tiny message to a server and times how long the reply takes. The answer, in milliseconds, is your ping.
The name comes from sonar, where a submarine sends out a pulse and listens for the echo. A ping test works the same way: send, wait, time the echo.
The distance rule comes from the speed of light in glass. Light in a fibre optic cable travels at about 200,000 km a second, roughly two thirds of its speed in open space. That’s why a server overseas will never feel like one in Sydney, however fast your plan is.
Latency
What is latency?
The delay itself. Ping is how you measure it, so most people use the two words for the same number.
Latency builds up in four places, the same four the ping line draws.
Your home network
WiFi adds more delay than a cable, and a lot more when the signal is weak.
Where faults liveYour NBN line
The cable from your modem out to the network. Bad joints and water add delay and drop packets.
Where faults liveYour provider's network
When it's busy, packets wait in a queue before they're passed on.
Where faults liveThe distance to the server
Light only goes so fast. Nobody can fix this one.
PhysicsJitter
What is jitter?
How much your ping changes from one message to the next. Steady is good. Jumpy hurts calls and games most.
Hear it on a call
Each word travels as its own packet.
Pings of 20, 21, 20 and 22 ms have almost no jitter. Pings of 20, 65, 18 and 90 ms have a lot, even when the average looks fine.
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One common way to work jitter out is the average difference between each ping and the one before it. That’s the figure the ping line shows.
Jitter matters most for anything live. A video call or an online game can’t wait for a late message, so late is as bad as lost. A call holds incoming sound in a short waiting area, called a jitter buffer, so small delays get smoothed out. Anything later than the buffer gets thrown away.
Streaming is different. Netflix or YouTube loads a few seconds ahead, so jitter mostly goes unnoticed.
For a real one, read how we tracked down a jitter fault on a gamer’s connection.
Packet loss
What is packet loss?
The share of your data that never arrives. On a cable to your modem it should be zero.
When packets go missing your device asks for them again. That’s fine for a download, which just takes a little longer. It’s bad for anything live: words drop out of calls, games stutter and jump, and pages sometimes hang halfway.
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Everything you send online is cut into small pieces called packets. Packet loss is the share of them that never arrive, shown as a percentage.
The causes we find most often are weak or crowded WiFi, a loose or corroded joint in the phone cabling, water in a pit or a lead-in, faulty NBN equipment, and a provider network that’s full in the evening.
Bandwidth
Why a faster plan won't fix lag
Bandwidth is your plan speed, how much data moves at once. Latency is how long each trip takes. More lanes don't make the road shorter.
Going from 100 to 250 Mbps would open this page 0.14 s sooner. Halving your ping would open this page 0.12 s sooner.
Simplified. Real pages fetch many pieces in parallel, but the balance between the two holds.
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Think of a road. Bandwidth is the number of lanes, latency is how far you’re driving. More lanes help when you’re moving a truckload. They don’t make a short trip any shorter.
A web page needs lots of small back-and-forth trips before it appears, so it leans on latency. A big download leans on bandwidth. At low speeds, bandwidth is what holds you back. Past a point, the trips are what’s left, and only a lower ping shortens them.
Good numbers
What's a good ping, jitter and packet loss?
Rules of thumb, not a standard. The tighter the timing of what you're doing, the more the numbers matter.
| What you’re doing | Ping | Jitter | Packet loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online gaming | Under 40 ms feels sharp, under 80 ms is playable | Under 10 ms | None. Anything over 1% shows |
| Video and voice calls | Under 100 ms feels natural | Under 30 ms | Under 1% |
| Streaming | Barely matters | Barely matters | Under 2%, or the picture drops quality |
| Browsing | Under 100 ms feels instant | Barely matters | Under 1%, or pages hang |
The ITU’s guidance for calls (ITU-T G.114 (opens in a new tab)) is under 150 ms delay one way. A ping test counts the trip both ways, so it reads about double.
Finding the cause
Is it your WiFi, your line or your provider?
Test on a cable first. It splits the problem in two in about a minute.
Plug a computer into the modem with a cable and test again. If the jitter and loss disappear, it’s your WiFi. Try it on the ping line: pick “WiFi two rooms away”, then switch to a cable.
Still there on the cable? Test at a few times of day. If it’s only bad between 7 and 11 pm, the likely cause is your provider’s network being busy, and that’s theirs to fix. PingPlotter can log it for you all day: here’s how to prove your dropouts.
Bad all day on a cable, or worse when it rains? That points to the line, either inside your home or on the network side.
That third case is where we come in. We test from your modem out to the NBN boundary, find which side the fault is on, fix what’s on yours, and give you the evidence in writing for anything on the network side.
Questions
Common questions
The four we get asked most about ping, latency and packet loss.
Does a faster plan lower my ping?
Not by much. Your plan speed is bandwidth, how much data moves at once. Ping is how long each trip takes, which comes from distance, your home network, your line and your provider. A faster plan helps big downloads. It does little for lag in a game.
Why is my ping worse at night?
Usually because your provider's network is busy, especially between 7 and 11 pm. Packets wait in queues, so ping rises and some get dropped. If it's fine on a cable during the day and bad on a cable at night, that's the pattern.
Is any packet loss normal?
On a cable to your modem, no. You should see zero lost packets in a normal ping test. Over WiFi a little loss can happen when the signal is weak or busy, which is why you test on a cable first.
Why does my game show a different ping from the speed test?
They're measuring to different servers. A speed test usually picks the nearest server, often in your own city. Your game measures to wherever its server is, which might be another state or another country.
Need this fixed rather than explained?
This is written from the field. When the fault needs a technician on site, this is where to go next.