someone explain me about ping.

[Multi Cat Generation]

if i am connected to a server or having a call with 100 ms ping

what does it mean?

if there is 100ms gap in between, how am i hearing calls continously or seeing a enemy moving without freezing every 100ms in game

 

[Needfuldoer]

6 minutes ago, BeefyTank77 said:

if i am connected to a server or having a call with 100 ms ping

what does it mean?

if there is 100ms gap in between, how am i hearing calls continously or seeing a enemy moving without freezing every 100ms in game

 

Ping is just a measurement of the amount of time it takes for data to travel from one place to another.

 

Your computer isn't getting new data in 100ms intervals. There's a constant stream of data leaving the server that arrives at your PC 100ms later. It's not an interruption, it's a temporal displacement.

 

Even if the data stream gets interrupted, just about every game ever released has a way to compensate for that lag, which smooths it out so you don't notice it as much.

Edited March 1, 2025 by Needfuldoer

[kitnoman]

As mentioned, it's a measurement of how much time it takes for a data to travel from one pc to another(or server). So basically, there is 1000 millisecond for every 1 second. And yes, the lower the the ping the better it is in gaming. As far as I know, around 120-150ms are the limit of a "tolerable" ping and latency. Once you see 200 and 400 or over, you probably won't have a good time. This is the reason why it's better to play on servers that's near your region or area, as it generally means the ping and latency are much lower.

[Multi Cat Generation]

44 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Ping is just a measurement of the amount of time it takes for data to travel from one place to another.

 

Your computer isn't getting new data in 100ms intervals. There's a constant stream of data leaving the server that arrives at your PC 100ms later. It's not an interruption, it's a temporal displacement.

 

Even if the data stream gets interrupted, just about every game ever released has a way to compensate for that lag, which smooths it out so you don't notice it as much.

then why voice breaks during a voice chat if ping is high. if someone says 10 words, 3 seems to be missing

[Kilrah]

That delay might vary too much, or there's also packet loss.

[Multi Cat Generation]

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

That delay might vary too much, or there's also packet loss.

yeah i think so if ping is 300+, i see players teleporting. 

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, BeefyTank77 said:

yeah i think so if ping is 300+, i see players teleporting. 

That's the game compensating for your high ping by guessing what everyone else is doing, then "getting corrected by" the next update from the server.

[mariushm]

Ping is the amount of time it takes for one packet of data to go from your network card, through multiple switches and devices all the way to the remote computer, and then come back to your network card.

 

This means that anything you do in a game for example will take about half that time to reach the game server, then the game server will probably spend a few milliseconds composing an answer for your game and then that answer will be sent to your computer.

 

It's important to keep in mind that ping is often considered a lower priority protocol than other protocols (tcp/ip, udp etc) , think of it like ping commands using the French language and the actual game communication using the English language.  The ping commands may not even actually reach the actual computer that has the game server, the ping commands may enter the datacenter and get routed to a separate set of computers or network devices which would filter these ping commands to protect the network against floods and attacks (imagine 1000 random users sending ping commands to the same compuer), and these ping commands may or may not be "grouped together" and slowed down a bit and replied to in batches, to reduce the possibility of attacks.  So the ping reply time may be higher than the actual amount of time proper communication between your game and the game server takes.

 

Multiplayer games support various latencies because they're smart enough to keep track of your character's behavior and movement in the game, and based on the previous behavior they can predict what you did it those 50-100ms between when the data packet was sent by your computer and the moment the data packet arrived at the game server, and the game server can make calculations and estimate where your character will be another 50-100ms from the moment the data packet is processed, so the answer sent to your game will be adjusted with this prediction of where characters will be in mind.

 

For example, if you're running in a corridor the game may have the previous 10 reports of moving from left to right in a straight line, so the game server could predict you're gonna continue to run for another 20-50 milliseconds in the same straight line.

 

Have a look at the video below if you want to learn more about how a game deals with the latency and all these network issues :