How to Use the Ping Command to Test Your Network?

The only thing that matters to gamers is that their internet service provider delivers consistent and high-speed internet. Without a reliable internet connection, your gaming experience endures most of this poor investment. Therefore, for gamers, there are a lot of considerations to make whenever signing up for an internet service provider.

I mean, imagine yourself in a one vs one situation on Call of Duty’s Killhouse and at the most intense turn, your internet connection disrupts, leaving you in deep despair. You surely don’t want that to happen.

If you are a gamer, your online games will work depending on your latency, ping rates, and download speed. Ping is the most important factor here.

Ping command to check network

Let us understand how Ping works:

What is Ping?

In space technology, ping refers to the time taken by sound to reach a certain point and then listening for the echo to return. Similarly, in computer science terminology, it refers to the process of sending information to a specific device with the help of an IP address and waiting for its response back to the signal-initiating device.

While gaming online, Ping is kind of a test that your network conducts regularly and is used to measure the delay in sending a message and getting its response. The lower your ping is, the better and smooth will be your gameplay. In case you are getting high ping rates, it is time to look for other providers with dependable options like Cox internet plans for a better gaming experience.

How to Use the Ping Command?

You need to follow the below-mentioned steps to use ping command for testing your network:

  • The first step is simple. Click on Start button and open the “Run” program. You can do it simply by hitting Windows+R.
  • The run window will open. Type “Cmd” into the search bar and hit Enter.
  • This will launch the command prompt. Type “Ping” at the prompt along with the IP address you want to test. Then press Enter.
  • You will receive a response the moment you hit Enter. The response will have the IP address or URL you are pinging. It will contain the size of data packets being sent on the first line. The next four lines will show you all the replies received from each individual data packet and time taken by these packets, in milliseconds, to respond.
  • At the bottom of these lines, you will see a brief summary of all the packets sent and received.

How to reduce ping?

Here is how you can reduce ping and latency.

Sign-up for high-speed internet

You don’t necessarily need supersonic speeds to reduce latency and ping in your network. For gaming, download speeds up to 25 Mbps are more than enough, provided that you are not streaming or downloading simultaneously. However, if multiple people are using the internet simultaneously, your games will take time to load. Therefore, in such scenerios, it is better to sign-up for high-speed internet with download speeds up to 100 Mbps to enjoy your gaming.

Use a wired connection

Using your WiFi for online gaming is considered a cardinal sin in the gaming community. Wireless Internet connections are not always stable and you might experience higher ping rates while gaming online. Therefore, it is important that you use an Ethernet connection for playing titles like Fortnite, Call of Duty, DOTA 2 and Counter Strike:Global Offense. The speeds will be consistent and you will get a reduced ping.

Close any extensive downloads while gaming

Streaming an episode of Stranger Things in high-def is undoubtedly a bandwidth-heavy activity and severely affects your ping rates. You are more likely to face higher ping rates during gaming while your sister is streaming an episode of “You” on Netflix. You can take two approaches here. Either close all extensive downloads, streaming activities or wait for everyone to sleep so that you get all the bandwidth.

Always play on a local server

I know the validation of beating players from around the world is hard to surpass but you can experience higher ping rates during crucial moments of the game. Therefore, play on local servers to get better ping rates.



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