How to read the results of a ping test

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InMotionFans
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My website is kinda slow, so I ran a ping test. I'm pretty lost, lol, sorry. I was hoping you could answer the following questions:

* What does a ping test do / why would I want to run a ping?
* What does "time=80ms" mean? What is a good time, and what is a bad time?
* What should I be looking for in the "ping statistics"? Are *'s good?

"InMotionFans", lol, true that!
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JacobIMH
Hello and thanks for the great question, Here's some answers to your specific questions:

What is a ping test? Why would I run one?

A ping test is simply a way for your computer to send a small packet to the server, and to measure the amount of time it takes to get there. You would want to run a ping test in order to see if you can communicate with another computer, and how laggy that connection would be between the two devices.

What does "time=80ms" mean? What is a good ping time?

The time=80ms at the end of each ping reply is the measured time that last packet took to get to the destination. In this case 80 milliseconds or 0.08 seconds. So you'd need to achieve a 1000ms reply before your packet is delayed 1 second. Depending on what you're trying to do, the time of your ping might matter more. For instance if you're playing an online multiplayer game, a ping over 100ms or so could be a severe disadvantage for you as other players could possibly see the games action a bit quicker than you, and you could experience lag where your actions aren't applied instantly. The same applies for websites and servers. For instance if you are streaming videos from your website, a lower ping time to your server would be ideal so that more data can be transmitted without delay. However if you have a simple text website with web optimized images, ping times around the 400-500ms time-frame can still be acceptable. The user doesn't need everything to display on the page all at once, and then change to another frame. The server simply loads everything up on the visitors computer, and then sits and waits for the next request, so there is not a lot of back and forth data transmitted to notice a delay or lag in the connection.

What should I look for in the "ping stats"? Are *'s good?

You'd ideally want to look for a consistently low ping time, one that doesn't fluctuate a whole lot if you have heavy data demands. If your website isn't very intense then medium to high ping times won't affect overall performance too much. But if you're receiving * replies in your ping test this is a time-out and could potentially cause issues if you're getting a lot. This however could be caused at any number of networking levels from your local Internet connection, your router, and any of the routers your packet goes through in order to end up at the destination server. This is when running a trace route test also comes into play, as it will show you the ping times of every router your connection has to hop through on its way to the server, so you can know if it's a possible temporary regional problem or closer to the server's location. For more information, see our full guide on How to Read a TraceRoute. Hope that helps, let us know if you had any further questions! - Jacob