Speed - Ping 48ms?????!?!??!!?!?

[Tapiwa]

Admin note: Same question posted to another thread - responses merged with the original

I'm a bit of a novice, but wanted to know what 'Ping' means when you do a speed test, cos at home I get about 48 ping, whilst at my friend's house where I am now, she gets 560ms ping.

I'm assuming if I can get my ping up, then my speed will shoot up too. I'm on Max whilst she is on the basic package.

(I have a Packard Bell @ home, so dont know if that makes a difference)

[PaulSky]

Ping is the time it takes for a packet of data to to travel to a target. The higher the ping the worst the response time on a network. You would be better off hoping for as low a ping as possible

[dholdi]

ping is basically the time taken in ms for your computer to send a packet of information to a server and for the server to send it back. 48 ms is reasonable, 560 ms is horrendous, i guess she doesnt play online games - lol. i assume you have made the comparison by pinging the same sites ?

[Saturday]

she gets 560ms ping.

Don't get too worried about ping times - they only really matter for on-line gaming where a response in a tiny fraction of a second can matter. Also, ping times will vary greatly depending on what server you are pinging and where in the world it is.

That said, your friend's ping of 560ms is pretty terrible. Hopefully just a poor server being pinged and probably using a wireless connection?