Speed test Guides

Ping, latency and jitter: what they measure and how to lower them

Speed tells you how much data gets through; latency tells you how quickly your connection responds. For online gaming or a smooth video call, it is often latency that makes the difference.

Three terms not to confuse

Term	Definition	Unit
Latency	Time for data to make the round trip between you and a server	milliseconds (ms)
Ping	The everyday name for a latency measurement, after the command that runs it	ms
Jitter	How much latency varies from one packet to the next	ms
Packet loss	Share of data that never arrives and has to be resent	%

A stable 20 ms is excellent. But an average of 20 ms that regularly jumps to 150 ms feels choppy: jitter and loss matter as much as the average.

What values to aim for

Use	Comfortable ping	Noticeable ping
Browsing, video streaming	under 100 ms	over 200 ms
Video calls	under 80 ms	over 150 ms
Casual online gaming	under 60 ms	over 100 ms
Competitive gaming (shooters, fighting)	under 30 ms	over 60 ms
Cloud gaming	under 40 ms, low jitter	over 60 ms

Where latency comes from

Distance, which you can't remove

Light travels through optical fibre at about 200,000 km/s. A round trip over 1,000 km therefore already takes about 10 ms before any processing. Playing on a server on another continent adds 80 to 150 ms by physics alone, so picking the nearest server region in the game settings is the first thing to do.

Your connection type

Fibre offers the lowest latency, often 2 to 10 ms to your provider's first server. Cable and VDSL follow closely. ADSL adds a few dozen milliseconds, 4G and 5G vary with mast load, and geostationary satellite internet exceeds 500 ms because of the distance to orbit, while low-orbit constellations come down to around 25 to 60 ms.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi usually adds a few milliseconds, but above all jitter: when several devices transmit at once or the signal is weak, packets wait their turn or must be resent. For gaming, an Ethernet cable is still the single best improvement.

Saturating your own connection

When a file upload, cloud backup or download uses all your upload capacity, latency for everything else shoots up. This has a name: bufferbloat. Packets pile up in the router's queues instead of being sent straight away.

How to measure your latency

A speed test such as Volt shows the latency to a nearby server: a good reference for the quality of your line.
The ping command measures latency to a specific address. On Windows: ping -n 20 google.com; on macOS and Linux: ping -c 20 google.com. Look at the minimum, average and maximum: a big spread reveals jitter.
The game itself often shows latency to its server, which is the only one that really matters for it.

Lowering a high ping

Switch to Ethernet, or move closer to the router and use 5 GHz.
Choose the nearest server region in the game or app.
Pause heavy uses while playing: downloads, automatic updates, cloud sync, 4K streaming on another screen.
Turn on QoS if your router offers it, to prioritise the console or gaming PC. Some routers include anti-bufferbloat management (SQM), which is very effective against latency spikes during uploads.
Turn off your VPN, which lengthens the data's route, unless it genuinely brings you closer to the server.
Restart the router if latency stays abnormally high while nothing else is using the connection.

If latency stays high over Ethernet, with nothing else running and to nearby servers, record your measurements and contact your provider: the problem may be on the line or in network equipment.

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Frequently asked questions

Does a faster plan lower ping?

Not directly. A 2 Gbps line won't have a better ping than a 500 Mbps line. But a saturated connection sees its latency climb, so more bandwidth gives you headroom when several things run at once.

Why is my ping good in a speed test but bad in a game?

The test measures latency to a server near you, while the game connects to its own server, sometimes in another country. Check the region selected in the game settings.

What is a normal amount of packet loss?

Ideally 0%. Regularly above 1%, calls drop out and games make characters teleport. On Wi-Fi, test over a cable first to find out whether the loss comes from the wireless link or the line.