Can you explain why there is a Ping difference and how i improve my ping if possible

claab

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Apr 20, 2015
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Hey i have a question about the internet differences at home and in school. I have around 30 mbits download and 35 ping to the closest server on speedtest but at school which is a 5 min walk away from my home i have 4 ping and its around 19 mbits download. Could you please explain why this is and if i could improve my internet somehow. Oh and in some games ive seen that i have a strict NAT if that says anything.

Thx.
 

pcgaming98

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Jan 24, 2014
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Your school has 19 Mbit? Did you do a speed test or something? That can't be accurate. Anyway, do you use WiFi at home? WiFi resultsnin increased ping since sending electric pulses through the air takes longer than pulses by wire (Ethernet)
 


That's really not right. Wave propagation velocity in air is way faster than in copper. Something like 0.97c vs 0.6c. Neither is going to make any difference for the tens of meters between you and the uplink, though.

Most likely, the home connection is on a more congested network than the school one, so the data is waiting in queues in your ISP's routers. Not much you can do about this, except investigate changing ISP.

It's also possible that speedtest isn't choosing the best server for you - I know it doesn't for me.
 
Where your house is located in relationship to the school means very little. Ping when there are no other factors like like congestion measure distance but is distance in wires/fiber and it may not go directly.

The assumption you are making that is likely incorrect is that the school uses the same ISP as you do. What you are measuring is the path from your ISP to the ISP that has the speedtest server. Many times even thought the speedtest server may be in the same city as you there may be no connection directly between your ISP and the speedtest server ISP in your city. So your traffic may have to go half way across the country to get to a server on the other side of the street.

Because the school gets 4ms that either means they are on the same ISP as the speedtest server or the ISP connect in the same city. Your connection likely goes farther. Even if they use the same ISP the ISP can have different networks for business and home customers and they can have different connectivity in their network.

Now this has nothing at all to do with the download/upload speeds you buy. The latency is the same if you were to buy a 10m server or if you buy a 100m service
 

spdragoo

Splendid
Ambassador
Say rather that it's not as efficient, since the atmosphere is nowhere near as conductive for electrical signals as physical wiring is.

As for network congestion... a home network will usually top out at 10 devices or less, where a school's network is more likely to have hundreds of connections (depending on how many computer labs there are, how many office computers the staff & educators have, whether they allow students to access the network with their own devices, etc.).

On the other hand, schools tend to have "business-class" service, which means the ISP is going to guarantee a higher Quality of Service (QoS) than for residential customers. Also, the school network's "node" for testing purposes may be a dedicated node installed at or near the site for the school's use, whereas the home provider has his service hooked up to a box with other residential customers -- & sometimes the line technicians aren't always careful about watching the maximum number of customers they tie into those boxes (my in-laws noticed a loose wire at the TImeWarner box along their back fence, & when the tech came out to look at it he found that 10 homes were hooked up to a box that was only supposed to serve 4 homes).

Try using a speed-testing site that will also analyze your QoS, both at home and at school. Also, for home double-check that you test both the Ethernet & Wi-Fi connections.
 

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