Good Ping Explained
Ping is how long it takes for data to travel to a server and back. Lower is always better. Here's what each range means in practice.
Under 20 ms — Excellent
Ideal for competitive gaming, live trading, and video surgery. Essentially indistinguishable from a local connection.
20–50 ms — Good
Suitable for all gaming, HD video calls, and live streaming. The vast majority of broadband users fall here.
50–100 ms — Acceptable
Fine for browsing, streaming, and casual gaming. You may notice lag in fast-paced multiplayer games.
100–200 ms — Poor
Noticeably delayed for gaming and video calls. Caused by distance to server, congestion, or Wi-Fi issues.
Above 200 ms — Unacceptable
Everyday interactions feel sluggish. Voice calls are delayed; gaming is nearly unplayable. Investigate immediately.
What ping actually measures
Ping — also called latency or round-trip time (RTT) — is the time in milliseconds for a packet to travel from your device to a server and back. It is not a measure of speed; a slow connection can have excellent ping, and a fast connection can have terrible ping if the routing is poor.
When you run a test on Speedtest.now, we send a series of HTTP requests to the nearest test server and record each round-trip. The median of those values is your ping result. Read how we measure it →
Why ping matters by use case
Online gaming
Games synchronise player positions and actions across the network. With high ping, the game server receives your inputs late, and you see other players' actions late — this is what causes the "rubber banding" effect where characters teleport. For competitive play, aim for under 30 ms. Most casual games are playable under 80 ms. Per-genre ping targets →
Video calls and conferencing
Voice and video calls encode audio and video into packets that must arrive in order and on time. High ping causes one side of the conversation to hear the other with a noticeable delay, similar to a satellite phone call. Above 150 ms, conversations become difficult; above 300 ms, both sides end up speaking over each other constantly.
Web browsing and streaming
These applications are far more tolerant of high ping than real-time applications. Streaming buffers content in advance; browsing fetches complete pages before displaying them. Even 200 ms ping rarely noticeably affects streaming. Browsing feels slightly sluggish above 150 ms but remains functional.
What causes high ping?
Physical distance to the server
Data travels at roughly two-thirds the speed of light through fibre. The absolute minimum ping between London and New York is around 40 ms regardless of your connection quality — physics imposes a floor. When you run a test on Speedtest.now, we select the geographically nearest server to minimise this factor. View our test server locations →
Network hops and routing
Your data passes through multiple routers between your device and the server. Each hop adds a small delay. Poor routing — where your ISP sends traffic on a longer path than necessary — can add 20–50 ms of avoidable latency.
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi adds latency and jitter due to radio channel contention. A wired Ethernet connection typically reduces ping by 2–15 ms and dramatically reduces jitter.
ISP congestion
When your ISP's core network is overloaded, packets queue at routers and take longer to reach their destination. This is common in the evenings. If your ping is 20 ms at 9 AM and 80 ms at 9 PM, congestion is almost certainly the cause. Check your ISP's ranking →
How to improve your ping
- Switch to Ethernet — the fastest single improvement for most Wi-Fi users
- Connect to a closer game/app server — select servers in your own region where possible
- Reduce background traffic — active downloads and uploads increase latency through buffer bloat
- Restart your router — clears stale routing tables and buffer queues
- Test at different times — confirms whether ISP congestion is time-dependent
- Upgrade your router — older routers introduce additional processing delay for every packet