NetKit

Ping online

Measure round-trip latency to any public host with TCP ping from our server: min, average, max, jitter and loss, plus a clear reading of what the numbers mean.

TCP ping
Try:

Port 443 works for any HTTPS site. Use 22 for SSH servers, 80 for plain web servers.

Reading ping results

  • The first probe is often slower. It can include ARP, route-cache warm-up or a cold path. Judge by the average.
  • Loss matters more than latency. Even 1–2% loss makes TCP back off and calls stutter.
  • Latency floor is physics. Fibre carries light at about two-thirds of its vacuum speed, ~1 ms round trip per 100 km. Our server location is shown in the output; a host on another continent will never be under ~70 ms.
  • If ping is fine but the site is slow, the bottleneck is the server or application, not the network. Check response headers and timing.

From your own machine

ping -c 5 example.com (macOS/Linux), ping -n 5 example.com (Windows). For TCP ping locally: nc -vz example.com 443 or PowerShell's Test-NetConnection example.com -Port 443. To see where along the path latency builds up, use traceroute.

Questions people ask

Why TCP ping instead of normal ping?
Classic ping sends ICMP echo requests, which need raw sockets that cloud functions don't allow, and many firewalls (Azure, AWS default security groups, Windows hosts) block ICMP anyway. A TCP ping times the three-way handshake to a real port such as 443, which also tells you the service is up.
Is TCP ping latency the same as ICMP ping?
Very close: both measure one network round trip. TCP can be slightly higher because the server's kernel must accept the connection, and it won't be deprioritised by routers the way ICMP sometimes is, so it often reflects real application latency better.
What is a good ping?
Under 30 ms is excellent (same region), 30–80 ms is good, 80–150 ms is noticeable in games and calls, above 150 ms feels laggy. Light in fibre covers about 200 km per millisecond, so London–New York can't go below roughly 56 ms round trip.
What is jitter?
The variation between consecutive round-trip times. High jitter (over 30 ms) hurts voice and video more than steady high latency, because buffers can't smooth it out.
Is this a "ping test" for my internet speed?
This measures latency from our server to a host you choose. To test your own connection's latency, run ping 1.1.1.1 in a terminal, or use a speed test, which also measures bandwidth.