# Could someone please explain the concept of "ping" to me? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 23, 2008, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-someone-please-explain-the-concept-of-ping-to-me/434623 "2008-01-23T03:30:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2008, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-someone-please-explain-the-concept-of-ping-to-me/434623/1 "2008-01-23T03:30:43Z")
I really am at a loss. I play Battlefield 2 often. Usually, my “ping” is between 60 and 100. This seems to be average. However, sometimes the ping is insanely high. Sometimes every server I play on, my ping will be 500 or more. This is very rare. More often, for no apparent reason, my ping will be something like 300. That was just happening a few minutes ago. Every server I tried to play on, my ping was 345 or some ridiculously high number, and most of them auto-kicked me because of it. What is going on here? Why is my ping so high? I’m not downloading anything currently, or doing anything else related to my internet connection. Is there some way of remedying this? ---
**Author:** ![Strain\_of\_Thought](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3be4f8/32.png) [@Strain\_of\_Thought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strain_of_Thought)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2008, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-someone-please-explain-the-concept-of-ping-to-me/434623/2 "2008-01-23T03:36:22Z")
Wait, are you saying you don’t know what ping rate is or that you don’t know how to draw useful conclusions from it? Consider reading: > **[Lag (video games)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_%28video_games%29)** > > In computers, lag is delay (latency) between the action of the user (input) and the reaction of the server supporting the task, which has to be sent back to the client. > The player's ability to tolerate lag depends on the type of game being played. For instance, a strategy game or a turn-based game with a slow pace may have a high threshold or even be mostly unaffected by high lag. A game with twitch gameplay such as a first-person shooter or a fighting game with a considerably faster pace may re... ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2008, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-someone-please-explain-the-concept-of-ping-to-me/434623/3 "2008-01-23T03:38:33Z")
I’m really just wanting to know how it relates to Battlefield 2 and other online games, and what the hell I can do to prevent myself from being autokicked from servers for having too high of a ping. The vast majority of the time I play, my ping is between 60 and 100. Usually low. Occasionally, such as right now, it’s in the 300s. What is causing these spikes? ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2008, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-someone-please-explain-the-concept-of-ping-to-me/434623/4 "2008-01-23T04:02:44Z")
Your “ping” measures the latency between your computer and the server. In other words, it measures how long it takes a packet to get from you to the server(actually I think that it’s the round-trip time in milliseconds, but that works out to be the same). Unfortunately, there’s little you can do to improve the latency. The major cause of latency is network congestion between you and the server. As you ping seems to vary wildly, the congestion is most likely somewhere on the Internet, not local to your ISP. The only thing you can do is connect to servers to which you have a low ping. There’s a big debate going on right now on what, if anything, should be done to improve latency problems on the Internet, but that takes us to GD territory so we’ll avoid that discussion. ETA: On the other hand, if your ping is consistently higher at certain times of the day, that would tend to point to congestion problems at your ISP. But knowing that still doesn’t help you much, because there’s nothing you can do to solve their congestion problems. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2008, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-someone-please-explain-the-concept-of-ping-to-me/434623/5 "2008-01-23T06:00:27Z")
All data sent via the Internet is broken up into pieces called packets, and all packets are passed from computer to computer in a complex path that will, naturally, take a certain amount of time. This amount of time is highly variable based on what else those computers are doing and how often a packet gets lost or corrupted along the way and must be resent. (OK, some packets don’t get resent some of the time. I know that. Lots more variables.) ---
**Author:** ![IAmNotSpartacus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@IAmNotSpartacus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IAmNotSpartacus)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2008, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-someone-please-explain-the-concept-of-ping-to-me/434623/6 "2008-01-23T06:31:43Z")
The application to online games of the problem here is that your packets take a long time to get the to server, which is where other players’ computers obtain information on where your character is and what he is doing. So if you have a high ping, the server cannot spit the data out in realtime, and your character bounces all over the map. It makes it hard to kill you, since you are not actually in the location that you appear to be in on the other players’ computers. Concurrently, you will probably find it hard to shoot other players, as they too are not in the location they appear to be in, since the server cannot send you updates in realtime either. All in all, it results in an unpleasurable experience on both ends of the server, and servers will boot you since your latency is not conducive to a pleasurable gaming experience. (spoken by someone who has been playing online games since 1994 and can attest to the entire freaking internet being lagged on Sunday nights due to lack of nationwide capacity and overzealous AOL subscribers)