Someone please explain this to me

[MrWizzard]

I understand that the down and up speed of you Internet affects your ping to some extent but it doesn't seem to always affect it. For example I can test me Internet connection with a bandwidth tester and I used to get 3 down 256 up. Ping to places was about 100ms.

I have upgraded to 10down and 1up. But my ping is still about the same.

Can someone explain this? Is kind of like the pipe got bigger but things are not moving any faster so the ping is the same?

Thanks

 

[spidey07]

It's tough to explain. Pings are roud trip delay - the time it takes for a packet to reach a destination and a reply received. So that's latency - this is normally a factor of distance, the number of routers between you and the destination, and to a lesser extent bandwidth.

To make matters more confusing, bandwidth does play a role in delay/latency. More bandwidth = less delay to put the paket on the wire. Once bandwdith moves above about 1 megabit this delay to put the paket on the wire becomes almost insignificant in over all router trip delay/latency.

 

[T3C]

Keep this in mind. Your speeds are 10MB down and 1MBup to your ISP. Outside of that you are at the mercy of many many routes, servers ect.

After your ping packet leaves your ISP and heads out to its destination it is out of your ISP's control. What I am trying to say is you could have cut your speed down to 1MB down and your pings are probably going to be the same.

 

[kevnich2]

At that type of speed, your ping wouldn't be affected. As spidey mentioned, anything over about 1mbit, the ping won't be affected by speed increases. Download/Upload speeds would be affected for files, etc. Why exactly are you testing your pings anyway? If your using it to see how fast your connection is, a ping isn't going to do it.

If you have a 10mbit/1mbit cable connection, and your not downloading anything,your pings will be at a fairly high rate unless something your path gets congested (many many routers, etc in your path), but if you start downloading something and your available speed drops to about....100kbit or so, you'll probably see your pings go down a little.

 

[JackMDS]

This is a very crude analogy but what the heck.

You have a Ferrari, very good acceleration, max. speed above 200MPH.:thumbsup:

Your friend got a Ford Escort, low acceleration, max. speed bellow 100MPH.:thumbsdown:

You both start at the Traffic light line and the street is empty.

Your friend (with the Good Ping Car) would make it faster to the next traffic light.:thumbsup:

However, you both live in the East side of Midtown Manhattan, and you both work at the upper West Side. Both drive to work.

Your friend would look better in his shiny red Ferrari, but it would take both of you the same "miserable" time to get to work.:thumbsdown::shocked:

 

[ScottMac]

Pings will be the same on the open / uncongested bandwidth.

The lower bandwidth pipe will become congested at a lower rate, so it will show higher latency (higher ping times) sooner (lower throughput).

As Jack mentioned, traffic pretty much moves through congestion at the same rate (variables are things like packet size (smaller takes less time because there's less to send) and whether there are any Quality of Service (QOS) or Class of Service set up on the link (not likely on consumer bandwdidth, more expensive on commercial bandwidth).

Good Luck

Scott