What Is a Ping? Is Zero Ping Possible? The Basics of Ping, Explained

If you’re an avid gamer, there’s a good chance that you’ve experienced high ping and cursed how laggy everything felt. It would be better if ping didn’t factor in at all; but what is ping, and can you achieve a 0ms ping?
Let’s explore what ping is, why it exists, and if you can get a zero ping.
What Ping Is Used For
Ping isn’t just a measure of “performance.” Specifically, it’s a measure of the latency between your computer and a remote device. A ping tells you the time it takes for a single package of data (known as a “packet”) to leave your computer, reach a remote server, and then return to you.
How Ping Affects Web Browsing
Have you ever noticed that when you click a link on a web page, the new web page doesn’t load instantly? The small delay between your click and the page loading is called “latency”.
Your computer has to request the new page and have it sent back to you. It takes a small amount of time for every packet to travel between your computer and the remote computer. Ping lets you measure this latency.
How Ping Affects Online Gaming
Ping is very perceptible in online games. For example, if you’re playing a game with a 20ms ping, you should have very low latency. Actions you take appear to take place in the game near instantly. If you have a higher ping like 200ms, actions you take will be noticeably delayed and you won’t be able to keep up with other people playing the game.
This is why many online multiplayer games show you what your ping is. It helps you understand how good your connection is and what kind of experience you should expect on the server.

A lower ping is always better; it means lower latency, which is faster communication between you and the remote server. This applies to everything you do online—whether you’re playing an online game or just browsing the web.
Sometimes, games and software will call ping “latency,” but it’s the same thing. Games often identify ping with color to help you understand how good your ping is at a glance. Typically, a green ping is ideal, yellow is borderline, and red is bad.
How Ping Works
Here’s how ping works, in a simplified way:

Your computer sends a small packet of data to a remote computer.
The remote computer receives the packet, which requests a reply.
The remote computer sends a packet back to you.

This is a single ping. Ping allows you to measure the round-trip time for a packet between your computer and a remote computer.
For example, in the image below, we use the ping command in a Windows Command Prompt to ping google.com.

As you can see in the “time” column, our ping to Google was around 11ms. This is pretty quick, so we know we have a solid connection to Google’s servers.
If you want to give this a try yourself, why not learn how to ping any website or computer and see the results?
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