Open In App

What is Ping?

Improve
Improve
Like Article
Like
Save
Share
Report

What Is Network?
Let’s start by defining a network. A network is simply a collection or system of people or objects that are linked together. A computer network can also be defined as a collection or system of interconnected computers. A computer network is formed when more than one computer is connected.

Real-Life Examples of Network :
A computer network typically includes printers, LANs, and other devices, but we now live in a smart world where we have a large number of smart devices connected to our systems, including smartphones, smart lighting, security cameras, tablets, and other devices. When a smartphone, PC, switch, router, and wireless access point are all connected to the same network, it’s a popular home setup.

Local Area Network (LAN) :
A local area network (LAN) is a network built within a single physical location. Your internet service provider installs a wall socket that connects you to the Wide Area Network via the LAN (WAN). A wide-area network (WAN) connects multiple local area networks (LANs), such as private WANs used by large corporations to connect multiple locations.

What are Ping and Latency ?
Ping (Packet Internet Groper) is a method for determining communication latency between two networks. Simply put, ping is a method of determining latency or the amount of time it takes for data to travel between two devices or across a network. As communication latency decreases, communication effectiveness improves.

A low ping time is critical in situations where the timely delivery of data is more important than the quantity and quality of the desired information.

Relating ping with a real-world example :

  1. Let’s say two people are 100 meters apart and first one greets other. The first person’s greeting takes one second to reach second person, who is 100 meters away. The second person then responds to greeting of first person, which takes one second to reach the first person standing there. We can deduce from this that both of people standing there are getting a 1-second ping with a total latency of 2 seconds.
  2. Let’s say you have wireless security cameras in your home that allow you to see the exact real-time frame of your home from anywhere in the world. However, main issue here is latency, because if the ping is very high, viewer will see robbery in his or her phone after some time, causing problems. As a result, prompt feedback is essential; any lag or delay is unacceptable.

It’s also worth noticing that the speed of the internet connection you’re using to connect two networks has no bearing on ping. If you’re streaming a game on YouTube, for example, you’ll want the latency to be as low as possible so that viewers can watch in real-time.

As a result, we can define ping as a type of protocol that is used to determine a computer system’s latency and network strength.

How To Get The Ping Value Of Any Site Corresponding To Your Server? 

  • The ping value represents the strength of a connection between two computers or a network. You can check the ping of any website that corresponds to your computer using a command prompt for Windows or a terminal for Mac.
  • Simply type the “ping<space>website name”  into the command prompt or terminal to have your system send some data packets to that specific website and then acknowledge you with value of ping that is occurring within your system and that specific website.

Example –

  • As you can see in the image below. I entered “> ping youtube.com”, then my system sent and received four packets of data from YouTube to determine the minimum, maximum, and average ping values, which are 20ms, 22ms, and 21ms, respectively.

  • So, if an online game streamer has two network options, one with 10ms of ping and 10mbps internet speed, and the other with 100ms of ping and 500mbps internet speed, the gamer will obviously choose the first because he or she wants to interact with the audience in real-time. However, if a person wants to watch YouTube videos and download them, he or she will obviously select the second option in order to speed up the download process.

Last Updated : 10 Sep, 2021
Like Article
Save Article
Previous
Next
Share your thoughts in the comments
Similar Reads