Traveling Through A Network

Internet is packets sent from the home source to the target destination. Such packet travel via cables, wireless, or fiber optics. The packets that we send from the home source include the data needed to arrive at the target destination and translate there. Such information may include the address, data type, and content. On its way to the target address, this packet may hit different internet computers/routers that will route it to the target destination.

In the PING and TraceRoute tests made earlier, we conclude that the further the target, the more internet computers packets will hit on its way, thus taking more time to arrive.

Packets transfer go through different stages on its way to the target destination:

Computer > Router > Modem > ISP > Other internet computers/Routers > Target destination.

 

I used PING a lot in my life, especially if you are a competitive or online gamer. Every millisecond counts, and having lag/delay in-game can be bothersome and disrupt the gaming experience. Running the PING command to a reliable website will allow you to monitor your internet connection and see if there are any irregular PIN spikes in the time or if there are request time out.

A real-life example that occurred to me last year was when I upgraded my service to Spectrum Internet Ultra 400Mbps download and 20Mbps upload speed. They provided me with a modem that supports such speeds, but my online experience was fine with my previous speed; this upgrade made it worse. Running the PING command to Google.com allowed me to see irregular timing every 7th-8th packet sent. It jumps from 10ms to 228mb and causes the game to lag/spike, and the gaming experience was not smooth at all.

Doing some research, I have found that the modem came with an Intel Puma 6 chipset with this issue, and it is common, and the issue is well-known in the community. Sadly enough, Spectrum did not offer a different router at the time, so I had to go and buy my own Netgear CM-600 router, which worked flawlessly (still using it).

 

TIP: In Windows, if you would like to keep the PING command running indefinitely to monitor it later, you may hit Windows + R > Ping Google.com -t

You may also do this in CMD but make sure to add "-t" at the end without the quotation marks.

 

A PING might return a request timed out if the target computer didn't acknowledge that it received the packet and reply. It could your Modem/Router based on the real example mentioned above.