Difference between "latency" and "ping" with a wireless connection

Solution 1:

“ping” (as a measurement) is gamer/layman slang for “round trip time” (RTT), which one might use the “ping” command to measure. It is a measure of latency, but it can be gamed by QoS-related traffic shaping; ping’s “ICMP echo” packets can be given higher priority over other traffic so that ping RTTs look great even on a terrible network. TCP connections also keep track of their RTT, they just don’t usually report it. TCP RTT is more important to know if you think your ping RTT is being gamed by QoS.

Don’t ask for “ping”. It might make you sound like an ignorant gamer, not a sophisticated broadband consumer. Ask for typical TCP RTT on a saturated connection. 20ms is decent, but 100ms starts to get into bufferbloat territory. Also ask about packet loss rates. You want something below 1%.

Solution 2:

I'm trying to discern which value to ask from the provider (pre-sale question) and how to interpret it.

You can have a high ping to a specific destination, but extremely low latency, to another destination or even the same destination using a different protocol other than ICMP.

Your ISP isn't going to have any control over the ping results to a destination outside of their network, it will have control, over the latency of your connection to them (specifically your latency to devices within their own network or networks owned by their partners).

You should stick what they have control over, in other words, you should use the term latency in any conversation with them. If you mention you have a high ping to Google, they will want to troubleshoot that problem, but solving that problem won't improve your latency to a service that uses a different protocol.

Given a wireless connection what is the difference between "latency" and "ping"?

As explained by this excellent answer by Ron Maupin over at Network Engineering.

Ping is a utility to test network connectivity. It uses ICMP echo request/reply to do this. The originating host sends an ICMP echo request, and the receiving host sends an ICMP echo reply.

...

Most ping programs run the ping several times, and they return a round-trip ICMP network latency. The Ping program usually gives you the number of packets sent, received, lost, and the loss percent, along with the lowest, highest, and average ping latency.

Within a comment, Ron explains the following fallacy about ping latency.

Your ping latency may not have anything at all to do with how another application performs. ICMP is usually relegated to the lowest priority, and it can end up sitting in queues while other, real traffic is sent through. Some ISPs will route it in a different path than your other traffic, sending it the long way around, or through secondary connections.

In other words, latency is a measure of the time it takes a packet of data to be received or sent, and ping is a utility which measures the average amount of time it took for a specific type of data to be sent and received.

There are various factors that would increase or decrease your latency, most of those factors are outside of your network, which means high latency is caused by other devices to the destination. In most cases you have no control over which path the data will take, and even what control you have, it is very little you can do to decrease the latency of that network.

What's the difference among bandwidth, ping, ping rate and latency?

Solution 3:

what is the difference between "latency" and "ping"?

Technically, ping is a program used for measuring latency. (And latency is the time it takes for you to see the effects of some action – usually the time it takes to send a packet and receive a reply.)

But informally both terms are often used interchangeably and describe the same thing.

I'm trying to discern which value to ask from the provider (pre-sale question)

'Latency' would be more correct, but go with whatever the sales rep understands better.

But in either case, the question is only meaningful if you specify both ends of the trip. (Just like asking about distance or duration.)

For example:

• Do you want to know the average latency between customer and ISP equipment? (That would describe the quality of the last-mile link.)
• Or do you want to know about latency from ISP to a specific site/service? (That would describe the ISP's own network and uplinks.)
• Or will you ask about the full path between customer and some site? (Tells you what practical experience to expect.)