What does a ping test actually measure?

It sends small ICMP packets to the target and times how long each reply takes. That gives you the round trip time, how much it varies between packets, and whether any packets were lost on the way. It measures reachability and latency, not the speed of your website.

Why do I get different results from different regions?

Because distance is real. Light in fibre takes roughly 5 microseconds per kilometre, so a round trip from Sydney to Frankfurt cannot be faster than about 300 milliseconds no matter how good the network is. Testing from one region tells you about that region only.

What is a good ping time?

Under 50 ms feels instant. Up to about 100 ms is comfortable for browsing. Past 150 ms people start to notice, and past 250 ms interactive work such as SSH or gaming becomes unpleasant. Compare like with like: the number matters relative to the distance being crossed.

Why does my server not respond to ping?

Many servers and firewalls drop ICMP on purpose, and CDNs often answer from an edge that is not the machine you had in mind. A failed ping is not proof a server is down. Check it with the server check tool instead, which tests a real HTTP response.

What does packet loss mean?

It means some packets never arrived. Even 1 percent is a problem: TCP treats loss as congestion and slows down, so a connection with loss feels far worse than its average latency suggests. Persistent loss is a fault somewhere on the path, and a traceroute will show you which hop it starts at.

Can I ping an IPv6 address?

Yes. Choose IPv6 in the form and the test runs over v6 if the target and the region both support it. If the target has no AAAA record the test will tell you rather than silently falling back to IPv4.

Ping Test. Check Latency and Packet Loss From 5 Regions.

Reading the result

Four numbers, and what they tell you.

Average

The mean round trip across every reply. This is the number people mean when they say ping, and the one to compare between regions.

Jitter

How much the time varies, shown as mean deviation. Steady is good. Wild swings make calls and video choppy even when the average looks fine.

Loss

The share of packets that never came back. Even 1 percent hurts, because TCP reads loss as congestion and slows the whole connection down.

Path

The address that answered and the network announcing it. If that is a CDN edge, you are measuring the edge rather than the origin.

What to expect

Latency is distance, not quality.

Light in fiber travels at roughly 8 microseconds per mile (5 microseconds per kilometer), and it must go there and back. That sets a floor no provider can beat. The table below is the physics, which is why a host in Sydney will always feel far away to a visitor in London.

Approximate best case round trip time between our regions
Between	Best case round trip	Feels like
Same city	Under 5 ms	Instant
Same country	5 to 25 ms	Instant
Same continent	20 to 60 ms	Immediate
Across an ocean	120 to 180 ms	Noticeable
Antipodes	250 to 300 ms	Sluggish

These are floors, not targets. Anything meaningfully above them points at congestion, a long detour or a saturated link somewhere on the path.

Good to know

Ping is not a website speed test.

A silent host is not a dead host

Plenty of firewalls drop ICMP deliberately, and a CDN will answer from whichever edge is nearest rather than from the machine you were thinking of. No reply means no reply, not necessarily an outage.

Test from where your visitors are

A server that answers in 4 ms from Cape Town can take 190 ms from Sydney. Run the test from each region you sell into, then decide whether one location is enough.

A slow average points at distance. Loss and jitter point at a fault, and the quickest way to find whose it is, is to follow the path hop by hop.

Check the server and its certificate

Ping test.