What is Ping?

[Sunny]

I tested my internet speed and my ping can get up in the 200s.. I see all these guys that post their results and have <10 ms. Is that why my games are so laggy? Or is it just my shitty connection speed?

[KRILLIN]

Ping is a computer network administration utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer. The name comes from active sonar terminology.

-WikiKRILLIN

[Eclipse]

In others words yes your ping designates that your connection blows. Unless you tested something over a couple hundred miles away. Test close <50 miles is the standard test if you still hit 200ms you should get a new isp

[WIERDO]

how do you read it.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1216896584.png here is mine

[Adrenalize]

http://www.pingtest.net/result/37473094.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

um.. is that good? whats a "good" ping. and whats a jitter?

EDIT: Lmfao wait no its not i got an F.. it says

Very poor. Real-time Internet application performance will suffer greatly on such a connection. Test to other servers to confirm the result, but definitely talk to your ISP about troubleshooting the issue.

wtf . :(

[N!TRO]

-WikiKRILLIN

Awesome! Just plain awesome

[forefront]

http://www.pingtest.net/result/37473094.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

um.. is that good? whats a "good" ping. and whats a jitter?

EDIT: Lmfao wait no its not i got an F.. it says

Very poor. Real-time Internet application performance will suffer greatly on such a connection. Test to other servers to confirm the result, but definitely talk to your ISP about troubleshooting the issue.

wtf . :(

Your ping isn't bad. You failed because of your 88% packet loss. That means only 12% of the packets sent were able to reach their destination.

[Adrenalize]

Your ping isn't bad. You failed because of your 88% packet loss. That means only 12% of the packets sent were able to reach their destination.

Whats that mean lol

[SaLoT]

Your ping isn't bad. You failed because of your 88% packet loss. That means only 12% of the packets sent were able to reach their destination.

http://www.pingtest.net/result/37475653.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

Grape?

[KRILLIN]

http://www.pingtest.net/result/37475653.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

Grape?

ThankSaLoT. Now I will never play again! Wait, my ping was 16ms with 1ms Jitter. :D It wouldn't rate my packet loss though =/

[Dragon Eat Kidz]

Basically the time it takes for your connection to interact with another and return back.

[Jewjitsu]

200 ms lol that's bad if you're not testing a connection from around the world. usually only a satellite connection can be that bad.

[chris_cr33p]

idk how u guys do this. sooo cofused

[MrChaosTheory]

I'd think with Fibre Optic my line quality would be an A not a B*.

I imagine at some point in my life my ISP and quality of service will consume me, I already think about it to much.

[forefront]

Ping won't matter much for gaming until it's over 70ms or so. Once you start getting to 100, that's when it becomes an issue.

Adrenalize, packet loss measures the amount of data dropped between your location and the server. If too much is dropped then the server cannot process information that is larger than PING like game data.

[phreekopath]

http://www.pingtest.net/result/37481339.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

5ms? that's BS... I've gotten ping as low as 1

A lower ping is going to be better, but there are a LOT of things that can effect ping times. First and foremost, ping packets have the lowest priority of any data on any network anywhere. If a link is clogged, or is even thinking that is could clog in the near future, all ICMP (aka ping) packets are immediately purged from the link. Ping really is not a very good test of of a network's capability or reliability.

Keeping that in mind, with the massive amounts of unallocated bandwidth in the world today, it's relatively uncommon for a ping to be administratively dropped by an ISP or device. A ping test is one of many available to test your network's performance, but it should never be used as the WYSIWYG type test that many people use it for. Instead, take that information along with speedtest results, preferably from different sites and hosts, over a period of time to get a better grasp on the grand picture. Pings move so fast they're just like a few individual frames from a movie. The shots might be good, they might be bad, but either way you're not going to know the whole story.

Beyond that, 200ms isn't a terrible ping, and could fluctuate that high based on your ISP's network capacity, but it will affect your ability to game well, for certain.

And 88% packet loss is absolutely atrocious. I could play XBL over my cell phone's wifi hotspot and get better connection than that. In fact, I could probably make an ethernet cable out of leftover speaker wire that my dog chewed and get less than 88% packet loss.

Now, jitter is an extension of pings. It's basically the fluctuation between your highest (slowest) ping time, and your lowest (fastest) ping time. This is a good indicator of network consistency, because your ping times are not ranging from 300ms to 5ms and back again. Lower jitter is better, regardless of what you're doing. It mainly becomes a major issue in anything that is real-time. Mainly VoIP, Vonage, Skype, live streaming (not viewing, at least not as much), XBL games, and even just chat. Pretty much anything that gets a constant feed of data in or out of your computer/network. But if you're just surfing the internet, or buffering porn ... I mean youtube ... it's not going to make enough difference for you to even know if your jitter is bad.

Jitter is also just a snapshot and needs to be taken with a grain of salt, just like ping. If you wanted to use those tests to get a good bead on how efficient your network is, take those tests a few times a day, every day, for like a week. Plug the numbers in and average them out.

Also, because I'm at work... this:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1217100592.png

[MidKnight]

lol, alot of people posting their internet connection

[Adrenalize]

So how do i fix my packet loss issue?

[WIERDO]

my pocket loss didnt even read

[phreekopath]

So how do i fix my packet loss issue?

There's really no way to answer that. There's many things that could cause it, from bad network cards in your pc, to radio interference on wifi (form other nearby wifi or even cordless phones, and some microwaves) to cabling issues, both inside your house and outside your house (which is really the ISP's problem). But again, just because packets are dropped doesn't mean you're connection is bad.

I'd call the ISP and see if you can get a tech out there to test the lines and signal strength and such.

You could also try pinging your router at your house and see if you lose packets there. It's kind of a long process, and without knowing more about your network it's difficult to really tell you, but I'll give it a shot:

Click START
Click RUN (if this doesn't work or you don't see it, you can press and hold the key with the windows logo, and press the letter R)
type (without the quotes) "CMD"
a black window will appear
in that window, type "IPCONFIG"
that will show you your IP address and it's Default Gateway (commonly 192.168.1.1)
type "PING (enter default gateway address here) -t"
let it run for a few minutes
then press CTRL+C

your statistics will show after that, showing your packet loss if any, on your personal network in your house.

[Lotto]

http://www.pingtest.net/result/37499506.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

[SecretSchnitzel]

http://www.pingtest.net/result/37519166.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

Sweet, I actually have a good ping. Shame my internet it still garbage and I can never pull host. :/

[Bleuprint]

Don't lie Schnitz, you pull host.

Post up your speedtest result. It'll show ping as well:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1216304364.png

[BaWsaNoVa]

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1162031419.png (http://www.speedtest.net)
I NEVER pull host :/ seriously I don't understand why I don't its so dumb...
Better then 98% of US and still NEVER pull host... Thanks xbox live.

[Bleuprint]

I wish I had that up Bawsanova. Btw, I lived in FM for like a year..I HATED it! :P

[Jewjitsu]

i honestly don't know what causes someone to pull host. i played halo for a whole day at GA Tech, where the download varies between 350-600 mbps, and the ping is 1ms. i didn't pull host a single time, although the connection felt really solid. maybe it's cause the upload is only around 10 there. my school (KSU) could probably pull host, it has like 200 down/40 up. maybe one day i'll be able to find out.

[phreekopath]

XBL, and Halo in general, keeps a log of how often your box has pulled host. As your box ages, it will pull host less often. I've heard buying a new box will make you more favorable to pull host.

Also, pulling host has a lot to do with your NAT settings. Everyone else in the game needs to be able to send/receive information from you, if you are the host. If your settings for your network forbid/prevent/hinder that communication, you will probably never pull host.

I believe the XBL/Reach servers then go by ping response times to determine the "best" host. They'll go with the box that has the lowest ping time that actually responded. As I mentioned before, ping is a horrible way to determine a good network from a bad. This is why there are so many bad hosts, they have a good ping, but a horrible bandwidth.

Aside from that, your proximity to the server also will greatly affect your ping times, as well as your ISP. If all of the M$ servers are in Oregon, there will be a lot of west-coast hosts, simply because their ping is lower and packets don't have to travel as far. However, if there is a server in your city, or hell, even next door to your house, you still may not pull host. Lets say you live in Cleveland, and there is a M$ server in Cleveland, that should be good, right? Not really, because of what ISP you use. For example, if M$ uses AT&T exclusively for their internet connections, and you are on Comcast, and the only Comcast/AT&T peering station is in Los Angeles, for your ping to reach the server in your same city, it must first travel to California, where it must pass through possibly hundreds of devices (which add to the latency and total ping time) and are possibly dropped, buffered, or held until there is available bandwidth for your low-priority ping packet.

[FUBAR]

This is not true. Set your router to disable ping response and you can still get host.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1217897680.png

I think that is an Okay ping when you look at the distance to server. Have not pulled host in Halo Reach in more than 2 months and Bungie has gives my connection a "Warning level", even with an open nat and Zero packet loss.

[phreekopath]

It's not your router that's responding to pings, it's your xbox, and they're not coming in on the standard ICMP port, they're being done on particular xbl ports (the ones you forwarded to your xbox in your router settings to open your NAT) by mac addresses that are hardcoded to your xbox that they can track whenever you sign in to XBL.

And I only used the locations I said as an example, I have no idea where the M$/Bungie/343/Halo servers are actually located.

[FUBAR]

I there servers were at their old office so I'd assume they would be at their new office but you never know with the whole 343 taking over. I'm sure they mentioned it in one of their updates but I can't remember the specifics.

I just figured that when I disable Ping response on my router it disables it for my computer so the same would be for my Xbox 360. Nothing to do with xbl and the MAC address. They can still see my Xbox and the it's MAC address they just can't ping it, I'd imagine as my. My router does not treat the IP assigned to the MAC address of my 360 any different than one applied to my PC.

If you can find any evidence to support the theory that Microsoft changes the ping packet to go threw one of the UDP ports 53,88,1863,3074 or TCP ports 53,80,1863,3074 that is associated with XBL then post it. Then find some reference to Bungie doing it this in order to determine host. It would make no sense for Bungie to use pings to determine host as they are given horrible priority as a packet in internet traffic. Unless that was all speculation about how Bungie determines host, with no actual substantial evidence.

I think the speed your Xbox can load the maps is factored in somehow. This is pure speculation though.

[phreekopath]

1.The servers I was reffering to are most likely hoested in many locations withint the cloud in datacenters all across the US. Useful for things like fault tolerance and spreading the load when a massive map pack download is initiated or bulk updates need to be made, so that 6 million xboxes don't attempt to download the same file at the same time.

2. When you turn off "anonymous internet requests" in your router, it is preventing someone or something from pinging your external IP address, as in, what IP you use to surf the internet. It's a real good idea to turn this feature off to prevent people from randomly pinging you, finding out your IP, and port scanning looking for backdoors. Aside from that, when you literally sign in to XBL, you have to iniciate a TCP connection, over one of the aforementioned TCP/UDP ports to authenticate your username and password. In order for this to happen, your box has to probably do a very common 3-way handshake. By recording the delay in the handshake, it's extremely easy to calculate your ping time without ever actually sending a ping/ICMP packet (which your router would likely deny). Remember, we're talking about ping TIMES, which do NOT require an actual ping packet to be sent to calculate, as a determining factor. This can be shown as, above, you said you had pings disabled in your router, yet speedtest.net was still able to determine your ping time.

Either way, whether pings are or are not used in calculating host doesn't take away from the fact that there are many other factors. Most of the threads (on Bnet) and sites I've read have mostly pointed to NAT settings and your Host Record.

Seems a general concensus is that if 7 people have NAT issues connecting to one another, and an 8th person has no issues connecting to or being connected to, the 8th man will pull host, regardless of internet connection. This seems to hold true if you recall the times when a single player will "lag out" or be kicked right at the beginning of a game. Perhaps he was the only person who could not traverse the hosts NAT, and that host was the only person the other 6 people could connect to.

Then, again, people constantly bring up the "Host Record" (which goes along the lines of "the older your box, the less likely to get host you are" comment from earlier). It appears that you get host for a game, the game go well, no one lags, host doesn't change, nothing. You get a rating, for ease of understanding, lets say 1-10. You're given a 9. A few games later you get host again. Your mom starts downloading bootleg episodes of "The Golden Girls" and dad's spanking it to live asian octopus porn webcasts. Your host is crappy, everyone's laggy, etc. You are given a 3. Your host record now averaged to a 6, which isn't very good.

I am sure more than 2 games are used to calculate the average, but you get the idea. A brand new xbox, with no history of poor host, is likely to get host more often as the system (meaning Bungie's or XBL's calculation) continues to gather information on the box to determine it's score.

Everything I've read or heard or seen anywhere is all speculation, however.

The only thing that can be said for certain is that ping is certainly NOT the only factor, if it is even a factor at all.

[FUBAR]

I was not referring to turning off anonymous internet requests. I literately have a function that has the label "Block any incoming ping requests". It looks at the traffic and stops all ping requests.

Speedtest.net can not determine my ping. This is what made me believe that if my computer is blocked so is my Xbox.

But I do agree with most of the other stuff you said even thought it is speculation and at best an educated guess. People who made booster account in Halo 3 by quitting a lot would just about never get host on their main accounts because they had a horrible record of leaving so often when ever they were host. But leaving when you did not have host didn't affect this. I know in reach after a month the Network information it tells you if you are inactive from the game it is reset. Well it happened for me not 100% sure if this was because of something special or just it always happens.

I'm not sure how people downloading would affect your ability to be an effective host. I'd imagine they it would be more detrimental to your host if people started to use all of your upload bandwidth.

The New xbox 360 Slim seems to have a shorter window when new that the old ones did where you get host every game for only maybe a week now.

[icy.]

http://www.pingtest.net/result/37733012.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

good?

[FUBAR]

I think the "Line Quality" is all you need to know if it is good. So an A would be good, if you consistently get this result then you must have a pretty stable and reliable connection.

[DaMuSiCFiEnD]

Played XBC a couple of times, stopped since my ping would hit in the 1,000's lol.

[Sunny]

In others words yes your ping designates that your connection blows. Unless you tested something over a couple hundred miles away. Test close <50 miles is the standard test if you still hit 200ms you should get a new isp

The closest server I can test is about 120 miles away. I live in the middle of nowhere basically.

I live in rural Nebraska. I have the "best" internet I can get around here, no joke, and it still sucks. I usually get mad in games but from reading everything everyone has posted it just makes me feel a lot better about when I beat kids online

[GunnerDude]

how do you read it.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1216896584.png here is mine

Yes Weirdo, for online ping, that is good.

[sujith]

Ping ('Packet Internet Groper') is a computer network administration utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer. The name comes from active sonar terminology.and check my ping from here whoisxy (http://www.whoisxy.com/ping.aspx)

[Eclipse]

Ping ('Packet Internet Groper') is a computer network administration utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer. The name comes from active sonar terminology.and check my ping from here whoisxy (http://www.whoisxy.com/ping.aspx)

nice job bring up such and old post, that has already been told what it is.