What is a good ping?
There is no single cutoff, but these ranges are a useful guide for a typical server in the same country or region.
- Under 30 ms: excellent. Feels instant, ideal for competitive gaming.
- 30 to 60 ms: very good for almost everything.
- 60 to 100 ms: fine for browsing, streaming and calls; noticeable in fast games.
- 100 to 150 ms: laggy in real-time games; calls still work.
- Over 150 ms: expect delays, common on satellite links or very distant servers.
What affects ping?
Ping is set by physics and by congestion. Data cannot travel faster than light through fibre, so distance matters: every 1,000 km adds roughly 10 ms each way at best. On top of that come delays from your Wi-Fi, your router, your provider's network and the server itself.
- Distance to the server
- Connection type: fibre and cable are quick, mobile varies, geostationary satellite adds several hundred milliseconds
- Wi-Fi signal quality and interference
- Congestion, especially when the line is busy (see bufferbloat)
- The route your provider chooses
Ping is not speed
A 1 Gbps connection can still have a poor ping, and a modest connection can have an excellent one. Speed tells you how much data moves per second; ping tells you how long each exchange takes. Video calls and games depend more on ping than on raw speed.
How to lower your ping
Use Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi, move closer to the router, pause big downloads, and choose game servers near you. If ping only rises when others are online, the cause is probably bufferbloat rather than the line itself.