Ping and latency has been always considered when measuring the internet connection speed. You may wonder why it is not included on an ISP Plan or Internet package. An ad copy will always highlight the bandwidth, usually expressed in Mbps or megabits per second.
What is Ping?
In a computer network administration Ping is a software utility used to test the reachability of a host on an IP network. Network administrators usually use it as a monitoring tool. Most operating systems including Linux have a command utility called “Ping” that can be accessed from the terminal or command prompt. Type “ping www.google.com” and it will return with something similar to what is shown below:
Reply from 216.58.197.164: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=52
Reply from 216.58.197.164: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=52
Reply from 216.58.197.164: bytes=32 time=87ms TTL=52
Reply from 216.58.197.164: bytes=32 time=87ms TTL=52
In the above example, the time in milliseconds, (ms) is the ping rate or latency between the home and the www.google.com server. The result will tell us that it took an average of 85ms to communicate with google server. Therefore, ping rate is the equivalent to the effective latency between your device and the internet.
What is Latency?
Latency or Network latency is an expression of how much time it takes a packet of data to get from one designated point to another point. For example, when we are pinging a server, latency is measured by sending a packet that is returned to the sender. The round trip time is considered the latency, as mentioned, from the ping result above, which is an average of 85 milliseconds (ms).
High latency creates bottlenecks in network communications. It prevents data from taking full advantage of the network pipe, and effectively decreases the bandwidth.
Does your company network experience high latencies or delays, and you don’t know what to do? We, at Aavex Corporation can perform a network analysis to pinpoint the root cause of the high latency in your network. We will recommend precise solutions, in order for you to utilize the correct bandwidth for your company’s needs. If this is of interest to you, please call us now at 630-365-0025.
