What is Ping??

[macc1264]

Why is a high ping bad on some servers of Call of duty?

[harrylipwig]

it means that the quality of the information being past along the internets is being lost. low ping equals more info being passed in its intended package. like static on you tele.

[macc1264]

Thanks...I have been trying to get somebody to explain that to me for awhile...so a high ping is not good...poor quality.....thats why i have a 2 second lag ?

[Dinky]

Originally posted by harrylipwig:

it means that the quality of the information being past along the internets is being lost. low ping equals more info being passed in its intended package. like static on you tele.

Ping has nothing to do with the actual quality of your connection. Ping is simply a measure of the amount of time it takes for data to travel between you and the server.

EDIT: To elaborate on this:

High ping doesn't necessarily imply a poor quality connection. All it means, for example, is that if you have a ping of 500(ms), you're essentially playing with a half second delay. Depending on how good the netcode is in the game you're playing, these higher pings can lead to side effects like warping and hits that don't register.

There are separate ways to measure line quality, the most common method being packet loss. This isn't hugely relevant, since with packet loss, having any is bad and will result in a game that's unplayable, or nearly so.

[harrylipwig]

Originally posted by zOMGREI:

Originally posted by harrylipwig:

it means that the quality of the information being past along the internets is being lost. low ping equals more info being passed in its intended package. like static on you tele.

Ping has nothing to do with the actual quality of your connection. Ping is simply a measure of the amount of time it takes for data to travel between you and the server.

but if you do a ping test it shows how much packet loss you have i thought these where the same thing.

[Dinky]

Originally posted by harrylipwig:

Originally posted by zOMGREI:

Originally posted by harrylipwig:

it means that the quality of the information being past along the internets is being lost. low ping equals more info being passed in its intended package. like static on you tele.

Ping has nothing to do with the actual quality of your connection. Ping is simply a measure of the amount of time it takes for data to travel between you and the server.

but if you do a ping test it shows how much packet loss you have i thought these where the same thing.

No, packet loss is a whole other problem. Games generally do not openly track this, as having even small amounts of packet loss means getting disconnected from the server or being in a totally unplayable state. FWIW, you can see your loss in Source engine games with net_graph 1, but it's not something multiplayer games bother displaying by default.

[aiusepsi]

If you do a ping from the command line:

>ping steampowered.com

Pinging steampowered.com [208.64.202.68] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.64.202.68: bytes=32 time=165ms TTL=46
Reply from 208.64.202.68: bytes=32 time=165ms TTL=46
Reply from 208.64.202.68: bytes=32 time=163ms TTL=46
Reply from 208.64.202.68: bytes=32 time=163ms TTL=46

Ping statistics for 208.64.202.68:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 163ms, Maximum = 165ms, Average = 164ms

What's happening is I'm sending some data (32 bytes) from my computer to the server on the other end, and it's sending a reply back for each packet of data I send.

The number you can see as "time=" e.g. "time=165ms" is the time it takes for the signal to get from your computer to the computer and back again, where "ms" means "milliseconds". We normally call this measurement "latency".

You can also use this to diagnose packet loss; in this case you can see I sent 4 pings, and got 4 replies, so no packet loss in this case.

As zOMGREI points out, having a high latency is bad for your gaming experience. Consider that if you have a 500ms ping as in his example. If you click your mouse to fire, it'll be 250ms before the server even knows about it, and another 250ms before your game client is told for sure if you actually hit anything.

Games try their best to compensate for this using techniques like client-side prediction (i.e. displaying your gun shooting while the information about you starting to shoot is still on the way to the server. or blood splatter before you actually get the hit confirmation) and lag compensation to make the simulation as seamless as possible, but it can't do miracles, so the lower the latency it has to apply compensation to the better.

[BDK]

A ping is, in it's basic form, a data packet that you send from your computer to another, then the computer on the other end sends a packet back (or ping) and the time it takes to travel between the two is then calculated. So the lower ping you have, the more responsive your online gaming experience will be.

[✪23salvage]

C:\Users\DESIGN2>ping steampowered.com

Pinging steampowered.com [208.64.202.68] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.64.202.68: bytes=32 time=319ms TTL=41
Reply from 208.64.202.68: bytes=32 time=303ms TTL=41
Reply from 208.64.202.68: bytes=32 time=322ms TTL=41
Reply from 208.64.202.68: bytes=32 time=301ms TTL=41

Ping statistics for 208.64.202.68:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 301ms, Maximum = 322ms, Average = 311ms

[[☥] - CJ -]

Ping is the amount of time information is sent and recieved to a server and back again. What affects this is distance to the server and the quality of your internet connection.

All there is to it.

[learntocounter.com]

Originally posted by harrylipwig:

it means that the quality of the information being past along the internets is being lost. low ping equals more info being passed in its intended package. like static on you tele.

nope

[learntocounter.com]

Originally posted by - CJ - DSS:

Ping is the amount of time information is sent and recieved to a server and back again. What affects this is distance to the server and the quality of your internet connection.

All there is to it.

yep

[Satoru]

Understand a few things.

In the old days 'ping' was a pretty important metric for online gaming. This was because net code generally didn't handle high ping connections very well, since the assumption was that people were on a LAN. Thus we got into a mindset that we NEEDED sub-100ms ping to have a 'good' gaming experience. And this USED to be true.

Today netcode is well optimized and that having high pings can still mean EVERYONE can enjoy the game.

Ping as a metric even if you can see it numerically can be very decieving. You can have an ISP that

1) puts ICMP packets on the bottom of the QOS tree so your ping might look terrible but your actual 'game' packest go through fine
2) put ICMP packets on high pririortiy, but your GAME traffic is low priority. In this case your ping looks awesome! But the game is going to suck because the QOS sends packets whenever it feels like it

That's why most games have moved away from a 'ping' pased metric because it's simply a poor one to use given how traffic shaping is now so common.

[ChrisW]

Ping is the act of sending a signal and waiting for a message that it has been received. Latency is the time it takes.