I'm from Hong Kong host a private site mainly for local browsers. I note that several message here mentioned PING time. I pinged my site using WS_Ping ProPack and got a 340ms.

I am shopping for new hosting service and noted some hosts give 200ms and other 500ms. What does that mean? Is that important?

Is there any other tests I can use (on sample sites provided by sales people) to learn more about the server performance?

THANKS.

ping is a tool to see if a computer is working and that the network connections to it are too. It sends a packet of data (64 bytes) to the IP address and then listens for the return - so the longer it takes to recieve the packet back the slower or further away the computer.

You should note that some hosts disable ping as it can be used maliciously.

In essence you want a low number of hops and a low ms - you can also use trace which may give you more information

Originally posted by milkcandy7
I am shopping for new hosting service and noted some hosts give 200ms and other 500ms. What does that mean? Is that important?

Is it important? Well, yes and no. Sometimes too much emphasis is put on ping times, IMHO. First you have to realize that it is a snapshot of the time it takes, at that moment, from one location to another.

Try it again in a minute, and hour, a week, and you'll often get a different number. So many factors can affect the ping time that sometimes it is basically a useless measurement of nothing.

Repeated tests over a period of time may halp you determine where to host a site, a server, etc. You should consider where the majority of your traffic is located, and how they access the site/server.

What I mean is that you shouldn't choose a host based on a fast ping from your ISP connection (that eventually connects through above.net for example), when the majority of your visitors will be connecting through Sprint from some place else in the world. You also shouldn't base your choice on one ping result, as a temporary network slowdown somewhere may have flogged the results.

Anyway, these are my opinions, feel free to disagree...

Ping is a tool which is used for network monitoring.Though this tool you can monitor your network connection.

Bye.

Let's not forget my personal favorite:

Packet INternet Groper

:D :D