The significance of ping

7 Apr 2017 20:45:06

David Fleetwood

When I recently had a moan at my ISP about periods of very slow internet speed, one test they got me to do was go into Network Utility and send some pings. The result was 100% packet loss - I'm not entirely sure what that means but it didn't sound good. I think largely because of this, they sent me another router and guess what - I run the same test and still get 100% packet loss! I understand a ping is a test signal which is bounced off a transmitter and the shorter the ping time the better as it indicates a higher speed of transmission but beyond that what does my loss, presumably of the return ping, tell us? My broadband is still working reasonably well most of the time.
I'm on a basic fibre package but not super fast fibre. I believe I should get around 24 mb/s but usually it runs around 17 -19 mb/s when the system is not on a go slow - I've yet to see whether I get the periodic slow periods with the new router. Any comments to help my understanding would be appreciated.

Re: The significance of ping

8 Apr 2017 23:21:53

Derek Wright

Use the BT Wholesale Performance test, go right through to the end of the tests including re naming your id etc in the router (remember to keep note of your id to get to the ISP again)

This test flags up in the exchange and can get the problem resolved (if you do have a problem)
Regardless it gives you very good ammunition to beat up your ISP.

Re: The significance of ping

9 Apr 2017 23:38:46

Tony Still

Ping is designed to test the existence of a connection between two internet hosts. It requires the active participation of the target: you send them a ping, they send a reply.

In more innocent times, that was all there was to it. Nowadays, many sites do not acknowledge pings for loading or security reasons. 100% packet loss really means 100% transaction failures or 0% replies; unless you are certain that the target acknowledges ping, try other targets before judging your internet connection. The various speed-test sites may be a better measure.

Re: The significance of ping

10 Apr 2017 20:31:45

David Fleetwood

Thanks Derek and Tony for your replies. I'll try the BT W'sale test and generally keep a note of the speeds I'm getting and get onto them again if it starts to fall off. The strange thing Tony, is that the Tech Support guy would presumably know if their target responds to pings or not. It seemed to me when I told him the result (100% loss) he decided the router was faulty but maybe I read it wrongly.

Re: The significance of ping

10 Apr 2017 23:46:26

Tony Still

David, I thought that too about the support guy.

However, if the router was that broken in that instance then I doubt it would work at all, yet you said it was merely slow. The issue being at the target site is consistent with the new router failing the pings too. The problem may be the support guy misunderstanding his tools or results, these guys often have little idea what they're doing, just follow their script.

There are other possible explanations and it doesn't all stack up but I'll plump for the simplest one. It's also possible that the old router just needed a reboot - did he try that? It's also worth trying to correlate your slowdowns with time of day/week - everything is very busy on Sunday evenings, for example.