Ping Latency Map
The App
The interactive map below shows ping latency between major cities worldwide. You can customize
the map by selecting source cities and setting a ping latency threshold. If a city has a ping
latency with any one of the source cities that is less than the ping latency threshold, then
that city is marked in blue. Otherwise, if the ping latency between a city and all the source
cities is greater than the threshold, the city is marked in red.
Table of Contents
1. How to Use This Tool
2. The Map
3. Understanding Ping Latency
4. The Impact of Latency on User Experience
5. Disclaimer
6. Credits
7. Source Code
8. Bibliography
2. The Map
3. Understanding Ping Latency
4. The Impact of Latency on User Experience
5. Disclaimer
6. Credits
7. Source Code
8. Bibliography
Understanding Ping Latency
Ping latency measures the time it takes to send a piece of information to a computer on the
internet and to receive a response back from that computer.
Ping latency is roughly correlated with the physical distance between the sender and receiver of
the ping. As a sense of scale, ping latency is usually measured in milliseconds (ms). A ping
between two computers in the same metro area takes about 1ms. A ping between two computers in the
same part of a continent typically takes about 20ms; for example, between New York and Chicago, or
between London and Berlin. A ping between computers on opposite sides of the planet takes about
300ms.[]
The Impact of Latency on User Experience
High ping latency translates to slow-loading websites and sluggish responses. This directly
affects user satisfaction. Even slight increases in ping latency can significantly hurt website
performance. The probability of a bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3
seconds.[] 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer
than 3 seconds to load.[,]
So, how much ping latency is acceptable for a modern website? There is no solid number, but
generally aiming for a 50ms ping latency between a user's city and a webserver's city is a good
benchmark. Taking this 50ms and adding another 50ms for the user's device to route through the
local ISP and for the webserver to process the request gives a 100ms delay overall between the
time a user clicks a button, and the time that the webpage responds.[] 100ms is the longest that a computer can take to respond where the user perceives the response to
be instantaneous.[]
Disclaimer
This map is intended only as an approximate reference. The information on the map including, but
not limited to, the ping latencies between specific cities, the locations of cities, and the
locations of national borders may differ from the real world.
Credits
The map data[] for this project is used under license from Wikimedia.
The ping data[] for this project is used under license
from WonderNetwork.
Source Code
The source code for this project is available on GitHub.