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Is 0 ping possible?
4 min. read
Updated onOctober 4, 2023
updated onOctober 4, 2023
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Many avid gamers and streamers seek to bring their pings as close to zero as they can, butis 0pingpossible?
Ping is an extremely popular topic on gaming forums, especially in troubleshooting threads where everyone attempts to find news ways to lowerping.
Since we’ve already heard that term getting thrown around a lot, we’ve decided to shift our focus to it and give it our undivided attention for a while.
In other words, we’ll debunk the 0pingmyth once and for all, whether it turns out to be a hoax or a viable scenario.
But first, we need a bit of basic understanding of whatpingis and how it works.
What is ping?
Latency is the time data needs to travel from your computer to any remote device and the other way around.
We usepingto measure that latency’s value. That’s precisely why we try to avoid highping, especially in games, because higherpingis equivalent to higher latency.
The longer it takes for data to travel throughout your connection, the later you’ll get to experience it. That’s why you experiencehigh ping while playing games in other regions.
For instance, when playing a video game, highpingmay translate into stuttery movement, unresponsive menus, and a general game slowdown.
Aspingis expressed in milliseconds, you can easily see how long it takes data to travel through your connection.
How does ping work?
That’s basically howpingworks. We’re not going to overburden you with unnecessarily complicated terms. It’s worth mentioning that if data packets don’t arrive at their destination, we call itpacket loss.
So, in essence,pingcan help you assess how fast a small data packet can travel to your destination of choice, and then back to you.
Pingis also a useful tool to see if any host is up. For instance, firing up a CMD instance on yourWindows 10PC and typingpingx.x.x.xwherex.x.x.xis any host address will tell you whether it’s up or down.
Furthermore, you’ll also see how fast data travels between the two endpoints (i.e. you and the host).
Is 0 ping possible?
Yes, and no, depending who you ask.
As we’ve previously explained,pingcan be used to measure how fast data travels between various devices.
However, thisspeedhighly depends on a wide variety of factors, including but not limited to distance, hardware quality, connection capacity, not to mention additional hardware between you and the server (cables, modems, routers).
Therefore, it’s not possible to achieve 0pingbetween you and a remote server. As data takes time to travel, any additional distance between your PC and the game server would further add milliseconds to thepingvalue.
Having 0pingwould mean that the server would already receive the data packets before your PC could even send it, which is a bit paradoxical, come to think of it.
On the other hand, you may achieve 0pingif you’re both the pinger and the host, which is kind of useless (unless you’re hosting a game).
You can try it out by using thepinglocalhostcommand in aCMD. You’ll most definitely receivepingvalues of <1ms (which we count as 0 ms).
Final thoughts on achieving 0 ping
All things considered, while it’s possible to achieve 0pingby playing both roles (pinger and pingee), it’s not exactly useful. Data takes time to travel, and not even fiber network can bend the laws of physics to achieve 0ping.
However, you can lower yourpingas close to zero as possible by resorting to a wide variety of solutions.
For example, you canuse a VPN to improve ping, speed up your Internet connection by using custom DNS servers like Google Public DNS, and perform regular network maintenance.
[wl_navigator]
More about the topics:gaming,lagging issue
Vlad Constantinescu
Vlad might have a degree in Animal Husbandry and Livestock Management, but he’s currently rocking anything software related, ranging from testing programs to writing in-depth reviews about them.
He spent 3-4 years as a software editor at Softpedia and another year as a VPN specialist before he landed his current job as an author at Windows Report.
In his free time, Vlad enjoys playing guitar, doing jigsaw puzzles, researching cybersecurity, and even having a good read on rainy days.
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