Latency Explained: Why Ping Matters

While most people focus on download speed when choosing an internet plan, latency can have an even bigger impact on your online experience for certain activities. Latency, commonly called ping, determines how responsive your connection feels. A high-speed connection with high latency is like a fast car stuck at every traffic light -- the raw power is there, but the experience is frustrating. This guide explains what latency is, why it matters, and practical steps to reduce it.

Understanding Latency vs. Speed

Internet speed (bandwidth) and latency measure fundamentally different things. Bandwidth is how much data your connection can carry at once, like the width of a highway. Latency is how long it takes a single packet of data to make the round trip, like the distance between two cities. You can have a massive highway (high bandwidth) that connects distant cities (high latency), or a narrow road (low bandwidth) between nearby towns (low latency).

Latency is measured in milliseconds (ms) -- one thousandth of a second. While that sounds insignificant, these tiny delays are perceptible in real-time activities. In a competitive online game, 100ms of latency means your actions are delayed by a tenth of a second compared to a player with 20ms latency. In a video call, high latency creates that awkward delay where people talk over each other. Even in web browsing, latency affects how snappy pages feel because each element requires a round trip to the server.

The three components of total latency are propagation delay (the physical distance data travels), processing delay (time routers and switches take to forward packets), and queuing delay (time spent waiting in network buffers). Fiber optic connections minimize all three: light travels faster through fiber than electrical signals through copper, fiber networks use newer equipment with faster processing, and fiber's higher capacity means less queuing.

Latency by Connection Type

Fiber optic internet consistently delivers the lowest consumer latency at 5-15ms for most destinations. The speed of light through glass fiber combined with modern routing infrastructure creates a nearly instantaneous connection experience. This makes fiber the gold standard for gaming, trading, video conferencing, and any latency-sensitive application.

Cable internet typically provides 15-30ms latency, which is perfectly adequate for most activities including casual gaming and video calls. During peak congestion times, cable latency may increase to 30-60ms as packets queue in the shared network infrastructure. DOCSIS 3.1 and 4.0 have improved cable's latency characteristics with features like Low Latency DOCSIS (LLD).

5G fixed wireless internet shows latency of 25-50ms, varying based on signal strength and network congestion. Sub-6 GHz 5G tends toward the higher end of that range, while mmWave 5G can approach fiber-like latency of 10-20ms in ideal conditions. The wireless nature means more variability in latency compared to wired connections, which can manifest as jitter.

Satellite internet has historically been the high-latency outlier. Traditional geostationary satellites (HughesNet, Viasat) sit 22,000 miles above Earth, resulting in unavoidable latency of 500-700ms that makes real-time gaming and smooth video calls nearly impossible. Starlink's low-earth orbit constellation has dramatically improved this to 20-60ms, though it's still higher and more variable than wired connections.

How Latency Affects Specific Activities

Online gaming is the most latency-sensitive consumer application. In fast-paced multiplayer games like first-person shooters, fighting games, and battle royales, every millisecond counts. Most competitive gamers aim for under 20ms latency, and anything above 50ms creates noticeable input delay. Strategy games and turn-based games are more forgiving, performing well with latency up to 100ms. For detailed gaming recommendations, see our gaming speed guide.

Video conferencing depends on latency more than raw speed. A 25 Mbps connection with 20ms latency provides a better Zoom experience than a 100 Mbps connection with 150ms latency. Latency above 100ms creates noticeable conversational delays, and above 200ms, real-time conversation becomes extremely difficult. Upload latency matters as much as download latency here, since your audio and video need to reach the other participants quickly. See our Zoom speed guide for more.

Web browsing is affected by latency more than most people realize. Loading a typical web page requires dozens of individual requests to different servers for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and fonts. Each request incurs a round trip of latency. On a connection with 100ms latency, loading a page with 50 assets means at least 5 seconds of latency-related delay (assuming some requests happen in parallel), even if your bandwidth is unlimited.

Cloud gaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming, NVIDIA GeForce Now, and PlayStation Plus Premium are extremely latency-dependent since the game runs on a remote server and streams video to your device. Total latency (internet latency plus processing and encoding delay) above 40ms creates perceptible input lag. Only fiber and excellent cable connections provide a truly comfortable cloud gaming experience.

How to Reduce Your Latency

Use a wired ethernet connection instead of WiFi for latency-sensitive activities. WiFi adds 2-15ms of latency due to the wireless protocol overhead, and this varies based on signal strength and interference. A direct ethernet connection eliminates this variable and provides the most consistent latency possible.

Choose a fiber internet plan if available at your address. The physical properties of fiber optic cables and the typically newer infrastructure provide inherently lower latency than cable, DSL, or wireless alternatives. Even the most affordable fiber plan will have better latency characteristics than a premium cable plan.

Optimize your router settings by enabling QoS (Quality of Service) to prioritize latency-sensitive traffic like gaming and video calls over bulk downloads. Disable any "traffic inspection" or "smart connect" features that add processing delay. Keep your router's firmware updated, as updates often include latency optimizations.

Reduce network hops by connecting to gaming servers or video call servers closest to your physical location. Most games allow server selection, and choosing the nearest server can reduce latency by 20-50ms compared to a distant one. DNS optimization using a fast DNS provider like Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8) can also shave a few milliseconds off every connection.

Close bandwidth-heavy background applications while gaming or on video calls. A large download or cloud backup consuming most of your bandwidth causes queuing delay (bufferbloat) that increases latency for everything else on your network. Some routers support SQM (Smart Queue Management) or cake, which automatically prevents bufferbloat.