What is Ping in Gaming? – Our Guide to Understanding High Ping

If you’re a multiplayer gamer, you’ve almost certainly seen or heard the word ‘ping’, but you may not know what it means. It’s actually one of the most important things in modern, multiplayer-driven gaming, and it’s massively impactful on how a game actually feels to the player. If you’ve been trying to find out what is a decent ping for gaming, you’ll need to read through this guide. Over the next few paragraphs, we’re going to answer an all-important question: ‘What ping is good for gaming?’

Introduction to Ping in Gaming

Let’s start at the beginning – what does ping mean?

Basically, ping is used to describe the delay between a gamer’s input and the server’s response to that input. It’s stylized as ‘ping’ because that’s kind of what it’s like. The input ‘pings’ the server with a command, and the server bounces back with a response to that action. It’s essentially used to describe the time that it takes for this journey to happen:

1. Player makes input
2. Input travels to server
3. Server recognizes input and responds
4. Response travels back to player
5. Action is delivered

That’s effectively the ‘ping in gaming’ meaning – it’s the delay that occurs when you press a button and that action takes place during a multiplayer game. It’s not typically associated with single-player or offline games, as there’s no network interfacing involved.

Traditionally, ‘ping’ is measured in milliseconds – otherwise written as ‘ms’. If you’ve played games like Call of Duty or Battlefield, you may have seen a number followed by ‘ms’ alongside the names of players on the scoreboard. This is their ping, and it’s a measure of how fast, stable, and accurate their connection is to the game’s server.

Is High Ping Good or Bad in Gaming?

Let’s say you’re playing a first-person shooter game like Call of Duty, and you have ‘high ping’.

In some dramatic scenarios where the internet connection is very poor, high ping can fly up to 300ms, 500ms, or even higher. Unfortunately, the larger the number, the worse the game becomes, as each action comes with a lengthier delay. So, if you’re playing a first-person shooter and you fire a shot at an enemy, it’ll take longer for that action to register, and by the time the shot first, the enemy could be in a totally different location.

Alternatively, it can take longer for enemy actions to reach you. If an opposing player comes around a corner and shoots you, they’ll be performing that action – on screen, at least – microseconds ahead of you actually seeing them do it. So, as you can probably gather, high ping in gaming is very bad.

What is Decent Ping for Gaming?

It’s an easy thing to work out – a decent ping for gaming is anything under 10ms. Ideally, you want to go as low as possible – but 0ms isn’t a thing. There’s no such internet connection that can offer a 0ms ping, but 1ms is doable. That means that it’s taking just 1 millisecond for your actions to reflect in-game – a razor-sharp, laser-focused speed. This is the reason why so many esports tournaments take place in a LAN environment, as it removes the potential sluggishness brought on by relying on an internet-hosted game.

So, we’ve answered the question, ‘What is ping in gaming,’ but now it’s time to learn how we address high ping.

How to Lower Ping in Gaming

As time goes on, technology is improving, and that includes the technology that powers our modern-day internet infrastructure. For instance, as Amazon’s Cloud services become much more advanced, more developers are plugging into them to host their multiplayer games. Now, Amazon uses a network of ‘stations’ around the world that players will connect to when they play their games.

Over time, more of these ‘hubs’ are being installed, bringing players closer to their servers, effectively. That means that ping is being reduced on a global scale, reducing the geographical distance that a ‘packet’ – which is essentially a piece of data like a button press – has to travel to register on the server.

Not only that, but ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are getting stronger and much more effective. Today, even the smallest residential internet providers can offer ‘gigabit’ connections to their customers. If you’re trying to learn how to get a decent ping for gaming, there are a few things that you can do:

1. Move somewhere with better internet. It may seem drastic, but it’s how a lot of the world’s best esports teams function, moving to countries like the United States for a better infrastructure.
2. Turn off devices in your home. If you’ve got a lot of people using your internet while you’re gaming, your connection will come under strain, and your ping will get higher.
3. Use an ethernet cable. Instead of relying on Wi-Fi – which may be getting better with time – directly connect your device to your home router via an ethernet cable for the most stable connection.

That’s everything we can tell you about ping in gaming – we hope you’re going away with plenty of knowledge about the topic!