Question When I ping Google my average ping is 29ms ? isn't that kinda of a lot ?

[Davv]

I have spectrum cable and living within 5 miles from Columbus Ohio (kind of a big city) centrally located.

Also with further testing using the Speed Test from Ookla with a spectrum server located in Columbus I'm getting about 15 ping in the morning at 9:00 AM and in the evening at around 5:30 PM I'm getting like 27 ping. Shouldn't I be getting like around 5-10 ping at the most being so close ?

I'm thinking about getting a really long cat 5 cable and run it directly from the back of the modem from the basement and see if it's something inside the house or is it spectrum cable.

What do you guys think is it worth further investigation ?

Thanks

 

[NightHawkRMX]

That ping isnt great at all for ethernet but it shouldnt cause and issue. My phone with a modern mediatek modem chipset gets 23ms ping. I use 5.0ghz wifi via a cheap usb adapter on my pc and if i use the same test i get around 27ms. While not great, this is good enough for web browing, 4k youtube streaming, and competitive online multiplayer games such as fortnite. If you arent having any lag issues in any application, its not something to worry about. If it is causing an issue, i would blame your modem that the other end of the ethernet cable plugs into. Cheap isp provided modems arent usually very fast.

 

[bill001g]

If you REALLY want to figure it out the time it takes to run in copper cable like ethernet is about 2/3 the speed of light. I will let you do the math but it is tiny.

The only way you can get really fast ping times is if you had fiber run from your house to the location of the server. Of course servers are located in all kinds of different data centers both in the same city and in other cities. Years ago large companies that ran their own data centers would least private fiber paths between their office and remote data centers. Not something you can even think to ask the cost of as a home user.

Now lets say you were a corporate customer buying a expensive internet connection. You an ask for the ISP to show you the path between your location and the data center. The will show you the exact fiber path and how long it is. The will show you all the different routers it passes through.

The path between your house and the server likely goes though multiple ISP. These ISP do not interconnect in every city so that path may actually go a very long distance to just go across the street to a customer on another ISP.

BUT it all doesn't matter you can do nothing at all about the path between ISP. Your only option if it is even possible is to buy the connection from your house to different ISP. You technically if you had unlimited money you could have a fiber run from your to any ISP.

 

[Davv]

Just checked Fortnite and it says my game connects at 26ms.

I guess I should mention my house was wired with cat5 not cat5e. So my router is in the basement with a store bought extension 15 foot new cat5e cable then I got that connected to a old cat5 non e cable with rj45 I put at both ends of this cat5 myself. Then that goes to the second floor to a outlet. Then I got another store bought extension 15 foot cat5e cable going to the back of the PC from the outlet. So basically two store bought cat5e extensions cables and one old cat5 with the rj45 connectors I put myself. I tried to replace/rewire the outlet it's just not possible, plus the original installers used these U type nails that are holding the cat5 super tight against the 2X4 in wall at a few places.

 

[bill001g]

It doesn't matter the speed the signal travels is the same. Again actually go do the math and figure out how long it takes light to travel even 100 meters which is the maximum ethernet can run. You likely will spend more time doing the calculation than the delay will add up to for the rest of your life.

Now if you were complaining that you could only get 100mbps on your connection and you paid for 250mbps then the you could suspect the cables but that is a very different issue than the latency. The amount of data you can encode into the signal is very different than the amount to time it takes the data to travel through the cable.

 

[Davv]

I'm getting the speeds I paid for I'm just talking about the ping.

 

[bill001g]

So what do you think you can possibly do to change anything that will affect the ping times.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

If speeds are as rated, there is little you can do to fix ping.

 

[jsmithepa]

So what do you think you can possibly do to change anything that will affect the ping times.

Move closer to the game server.

But before u do, may wanna google TRAINED HUMAN REACTION TIMES.