PING - what is this? PING utility. Ping-server

Today, no one is surprised that the Internet is an extremely important part of everyday life. Even the latest resolutions of our government testify that the authorities realized the full necessity of this means of communication, suggesting in subsequent years to provide a reliable connection to almost all settlements in the country.

It remains to be hoped that all these plans will be implemented, since the lack of a normal communication channel has a bad effect on the infrastructure of remote settlements. Verifying the quality of the connection is sure to concern every more or less experienced user, since this factor depends on the convenience and speed of almost all modern operating systems that can not function fully without the Internet.

Someone uses paid third-party utilities to determine the quality of the channel, but most users with experience prefer PING. What is it, by the way?

General concepts

Ping in a professional environment is called the response time of a remote computer or site. Simply put, this is the time for which the signal from your computer can pass to the remote machine. The lower this figure, the better the network performance.

Of course, ping is inversely proportional to the quality of the connection and the speed of your Internet connection. If the speed is low and the quality of the channel leaves much to be desired, then its value can reach a few hundred milliseconds (ms).

Important!

However, not for all methods of connection to the Internet, this definition is completely fair. You probably know about a bi-directional (asynchronous) satellite access channel to the World Wide Web. When you use it, you will not get a really small PING in any way and under no circumstances. What does it mean? It's all about the characteristics of this channel.

When using it, your computer will first send a request through a terrestrial communication channel (USB-modem, Dial UP), and the incoming data stream will go through a satellite channel. Of course, that even with sufficiently decent characteristics of terrestrial communication, it will take a long time for the signals to be received and sent.

What depends on ping?

Of course, in the latter case, the speed of data reception can be very decent, sometimes reaching hundreds of megabits per second, so there is clearly no need to talk about a bad connection. The problem is that the quality of the work of many popular services and services greatly depends on the value of ping. So, about online games in case of a long ping, you can safely forget. The same applies to conferences in real time.

The fact is that when communicating in real time, the information to your interlocutor should come instantly, as the technology of pre-buffering (for obvious reasons) will not be able to be used. So Ping Test before the conference in real time should be carried out without fail.

If the ping is more or less normal, but still falls short of optimal, it's easy to see even when using a conventional audio data channel: the sound will "stutter," "croak," and sometimes completely disappear.

What factors does ping depend on?

The value of this value depends on several factors, which must always be taken into account. In some cases, you can even reduce PING. What does it mean? The matter is that sometimes it is possible to eliminate the reasons, because of which the response time is seriously increased.

So, the delay on the user's computer (Ping Windows). First, the sound from the microphone goes to the sound card (built-in or discrete, there is not particularly a difference), and from the web camera the image passes through the USB port. The processing of most of the information is the responsibility of the central processor of your computer. If the processor clock speed on your device is not too high, and the amount of RAM also does not cause much enthusiasm, there may be serious problems with ping.

So, talking with a friend on Skype and using a low-power machine for this, try not to open a large number of dialogs at the same time. In addition, at this time should refrain from viewing Flash-video, as it seriously overloads low-power processors on older computers.

Ping-server provider

What should I know about in this case? A huge role is played by the delay on the servers of the provider (Ping-server) from which you buy access to the Internet. After all, it is the server of this company that connects the user's computer with the Global Web. You should be aware that on the Internet , data transmission is performed by small "snippets" of data, which are also called packets.

If the load on the servers of the provider is extremely high, and the equipment used by them is very outdated, processing of these packets is put in the queue. In this case, you will not get a normal PING. What does this mean for the user? The same as in the case of satellite Internet: many interactive services can be safely forgotten.

Signal transmission lines

From the provider the signal goes to the big trunk lines, on which it goes with a huge speed. Usually, optical fiber is used, the speed of the packets is equal to the speed of light, but less than the speed of light in a vacuum. However, it should be remembered that in the signal path there are numerous converters and amplifiers, the system of which is extremely complicated. Of course, all this also leads to an increase in the delay time. In this case, the Ping network is delayed.

The final information processing server

Very much depends on this object. Thus, modern servers from Microsoft are able to handle a huge amount of information per unit of time, than favorably differ from the equipment of a small company that does not have such capabilities. This is especially noticeable in the transmission of streaming video, which has a very decent size and creates a heavy load on the server processor through which the transfer is performed.

Having passed such a long and difficult path, the signal is finally processed and sent back to the user's computer.

Attention! It is possible that he will go back quite another road. Strange as it may seem, sometimes a signal from Moscow is easier to transfer through some Angola than to use the very out-of-date trunk lines of local providers. In this case it turns out to significantly reduce the ping.

Ping Tool

As we already said in the very first part of the article, you can measure this indicator by using the built-in Ping utility in Windows. Run it very simple. First click the left mouse button on the Start button, click on the item "All Programs", select "Standard" there. The last folder has the command line utility.

In its window type the word ping, put a space, and then write the address of the site. Then you can press Enter. The utility will show the number of packets to be sent, indicate the percentage of losses and measure the delay time of the signal.

As you can see, the Ping utility is quite informative and convenient tool.

The situation with ping in our country and in the world

Until recently, the situation with signal delay was very sad in our country. According to foreign and domestic experts, at the end of the 1990s, the ping in the territory of the entire former CIS was about 200-300 ms at best, while in Europe and the United States there were long time providers providing a delay of approximately 20-30 Ms.

Today Japan holds the crown of the championship. Having the ability even for ordinary users to provide Internet with a gigabit rate, local providers provide ping no more than 2-3 ms. Our situation has also improved: even the infamous Rostelecom provides access to the Internet with a delay of no more than 15-20 ms, which in previous years it was impossible to wish for.

If we talk about the CIS countries, then the Ping Test shows the signal quality at the level of 50-60 ms, which is quite an average indicator.

conclusions

Thus, the delays in sending and receiving a signal have always been and will be, since they depend on many factors that have little effect on each other. In your power to optimize the hardware of your computer and choose the best provider (if there is such an option).