Just for the hell of it, I pinged these 12 hosts below 1 time from my cable modem on my home PC, here in Nashville, Tennessee.

Average ping times from NASHVILLE, TN

30 ms focalhosting.com (594 mi to Jacksonville, FL)
34 ms mehost.com (866 mi to Parsippany, NJ)
39 ms pwebtech.com (866 mi to Parsippany, NJ)
40 ms fluidhosting.com (1097 mi to Boston, MA)
40 ms splashhost.com (878 mi to Newton, NJ)
47 ms httpme.com (837 mi to Scranton, PA)
48 ms rochenhost.com (837 mi to Scranton, PA)
52 ms eishost.com (756 to Melbourne, FL)
74 ms venturesonline.com (1162 mi to Englewood, CO)
92 ms mchost.com (250 mi to Atlanta, GA)
128 ms adehost.com (2426 mi to Seattle, WA)
141 ms gearhost.com (1162 mi to Englewood, CO)


Please feel free to correct me if I made a mistake in data center locations or mileage. Mileage is approx taken from Mapquest.

Sweet, 4 out of the top 6. I host or own :)

For better accuracy, I plan to edit the initial post and add locations and distances so you may want to check back.

Hey Chris, can you give me a link to the site you are using to do this. Seems like i could kill a couple hours or so pinging sites.

If you read his post, he is doing it from hist cable modem, not from a web site.

I think this may be interesting :) Once you know the distance, you may divide distance by the average ping latency to get 'ping speed' in xxx miles/ms :) I like this game :)

regards,
-dave

Hey, ping us at rackspace, San Antonio. Texas isn't represented!

You could always use this:
http://www.tracert.com/cgi-bin/ping.pl

Or better yet, this (more sources and routes convey more information that just a simple ping):
http://www.tracert.com/cgi-bin/trace.pl

When you are through asking one question at a time, and finally do choose a reseller host and stay there for more than a few months, it will be interesting to see your results (not talking about ping).

splashhost.com is actually in parsippany.

Originally posted by jayglate
Sweet, 4 out of the top 6. I host or own :)

Of course this only matters for this one particular person. Ping test are terriible ways to test true network speed, latency or throughput. They only yield results related to that *one* person.

My ping test shows your four to be at the bottom or in the middle, while the RS and VO are at the top.

A good result would be for numerous people posting from around the world like the thread starter pointed out.

Our if you really want to get a good avg use NetMechanic.com They will run test every 15 minutes for 2 days and give you the results like these. http://scp.netmechanic.com/reports/free/174/0341/55-019525.htm

If anyone is interested, i'd like to set up some sort of web hosting latency tracking system. Initially i'd set up a box with smokeping (http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/smokeping/ , example : http://eng.nac.net/smokeping/smokeping.cgi?target=Base) to monitor various hosting sites/companies. I'd like some way to syncronize configurations with some other people on the west coast, or europe, etc so we have some sort of consistancy. Anyone want to be a part of this? I'd probably just put a CVS server on my box, or allow rsync of the config file and a remote person would just update daily or so. This is similar to the various traceroute sites out there, but this is more automated and statistical, and we can get a perspective view.

Thanks

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Of course this only matters for this one particular person. Ping test are terriible ways to test true network speed, latency or throughput. They only yield results related to that *one* person.


That's why I propose "ping speed"; the geographcal distance between two points divides by the roundtrip ping latency time. Not a really accurate way to give what we want to know, but it may to some extend tell us something. For example, when pinging a network with poor peering we may get a higher ping time although the network itself is geographically not too far away hence the "ping speed" will be slower that some other. I still remember tracerouting somebody 500 miles aways (geographically) but then the data was sent all across from east coast to west coast and back to east coast again.

regards,
-dave

Well, I'm tired of pinging for now :), and as others have pointed out previously that downloading a file is a better test for speed. I just pinged the first 12 hosts that I thought of, and thought I'd post the results since so many in this group seem interested in pings (everybody likes to ping, 'eh?).

It was interesting though that MCHost was the closest to me at approx 250 miles, yet it wasn't the fastest avg ping time. Considering mileage and times, it looks like fluidhosting was the winner. Is that what you wanted me to say, Dave? :)

PS Splashhost in Parsippany, OK... but that's only 12 mi difference than Eaton so I don't think it makes much difference in the ping distance. Thanks for the info, though.

Its interesting how people know where my servers are better than i do lol.

146 ms focalhosting.com (Jacksonville, FL)
91 ms mehost.com (Parsippany, NJ)
95 ms pwebtech.com (Parsippany, NJ)
100 ms fluidhosting.com (Boston, MA)
93 ms splashhost.com (Newton, NJ)
108 ms httpme.com (Scranton, PA)
100 ms rochenhost.com (Scranton, PA)
115 ms eishost.com (Melbourne, FL)
142 ms venturesonline.com (Englewood, CO)
106 ms mchost.com (Atlanta, GA)
175 ms adehost.com (Seattle, WA)
172 ms gearhost.com (Englewood, CO)

Here is a copy of the host's ping times from the UK on 1MBit cable line.

Actually doing a trace route will probably tell you much more than a mere ping. Sometimes a destination is very close yet the traceroute goes all over the place. This results in higher than expected ping results, of course. When you consider distance+ping time together with traceroute results, then you can understand a lot more. Of course there are many others that need consideration. My favourite way is pinging the host continuously for several days using pingplotter (pingplotter.com) to see how the ping latency time goes over time; sometimes a network will give good result, but then every now and a while it shows some potential problems with the network. PingPlotter will help you see this.


Considering mileage and times, it looks like fluidhosting was the winner. Is that what you wanted me to say, Dave? :)


It's not really what I want to say, but it just the way to be fair. It just not fair to think that a network is slow/inferior just because the ping results is not the fastest :)

regards,
-dave

Originally posted by rochen
146 ms focalhosting.com (Jacksonville, FL)
91 ms mehost.com (Parsippany, NJ)
95 ms pwebtech.com (Parsippany, NJ)
100 ms fluidhosting.com (Boston, MA)
93 ms splashhost.com (Newton, NJ)
108 ms httpme.com (Scranton, PA)
100 ms rochenhost.com (Scranton, PA)
115 ms eishost.com (Melbourne, FL)
142 ms venturesonline.com (Englewood, CO)
106 ms mchost.com (Atlanta, GA)
175 ms adehost.com (Seattle, WA)
172 ms gearhost.com (Englewood, CO)

Here is a copy of the host's ping times from the UK on 1MBit cable line.

Thanks for posting the ping avg times from also the UK. It's interesting to me that mehost and pwebtech are both in the same datacenter, AFAIK, yet mehost still pings a little faster than pwebtech, just like it did in my ping tests.

Can you tell I'm trying to learn about pings, and what they mean? I don't completely understand how to read a traceroute, and what it all means either. Just wait until I try to learn more about traceroutes. :(

Originally posted by chrisb
It's interesting to me that mehost and pwebtech are both in the same datacenter, AFAIK, yet mehost still pings a little faster than pwebtech, just like it did in my ping tests.


I think that's normal, it's less than 3% variation and it's understandable since although they are in the same data center, you are doing two separate pings and the two should give you different results. To be more accurate, try to take the average of 100 or 200 (or even bigger) pings. Besides, a 3 ms different is nothing to be worried about. It takes human being roughly hundreds of ms to do an eye blink. So you won't even see any difference at all :)

regards,
-dave