Ping, jitter and packet loss: what each one does to your game

Three numbers describe a connection to a game server. Most players watch only the first, and it's often the least important of the three.

Ping: the delay

Ping is the time a message takes to reach the game server and come back, in milliseconds. Everything you do reaches the server half a ping later, and what the server decides reaches you another half later.

Distance sets the floor. Signals travel through fibre at about two thirds of the speed of light, so a server 1,500 km away can't answer in less than about 15 ms, and real routes are never a straight line. No setting, program or subscription gets under that floor.

As a rule of thumb, under 50 ms feels immediate in most games and 50 to 100 ms is playable. Above that, you start losing fights you thought you'd won.

Jitter: how much the delay wobbles

Jitter is the variation in ping from one moment to the next. A connection that answers in 40, 41, 39, 40 ms has almost none. One that answers in 20, 90, 25, 140 ms has a lot, even though its average doesn't look bad.

Games are built around a steady delay. They smooth movement by showing other players slightly in the past, and they size that buffer for the delay they expect. When the delay jumps, the buffer runs dry: players teleport, your shots register late, and the game feels wrong in a way the ping number doesn't explain.

That's why a steady 60 ms plays better than an average of 35 ms that keeps jumping. If you can only improve one number, improve this one.

Packet loss: what never arrives

Packet loss is the share of messages that disappear on the way. Games that use UDP, which is most shooters, simply carry on without the missing piece: for a moment the server doesn't know what you did, or you don't see what someone else did. Games that use TCP, such as Minecraft Java Edition and World of Warcraft, wait for the missing piece to be sent again, so loss shows up as a short freeze followed by everything happening at once.

A healthy connection loses nothing. Even 1% that keeps happening is noticeable, and a few percent makes a competitive game miserable.

What causes each one

• High but steady ping is distance, or a route that takes a detour.
• Jitter is queueing: Wi-Fi retrying, a full line at home, a busy link somewhere on the route.
• Loss is something overloaded or faulty: a bad cable, weak Wi-Fi, a congested link.

Ping spikes: what causes them and how to find yours shows how to work out which part of the path is responsible.

How to measure them

Many games can show all three on screen in their network or telemetry settings. From Windows, ping -n 50 followed by an address gives you the lowest, highest and average time, and the number lost. The gap between lowest and highest is a rough measure of jitter.

Measure for long enough, and while the problem is happening. Ten good replies in a row prove very little.

Where NoSpike fits

NoSpike measures all three, on your direct route and through each of its relays, and shows them side by side. It ranks routes on the three together, so a route with lower ping but more jitter or loss doesn't win. If no relay beats your own connection, it tells you and routes nothing.