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I have been looking into improving my ping from home in the recently weeks as I am an avid gamer. I know there is a lot of bad information out there about improving ping, but I really started looking into it because I noticed that when I'm on my University's network, the ping is VASTLY better than at home to certain servers, and I live just right down the block.

I am mostly interested in the ping I get to the Ohio and Virginia Amazon servers. At my school (UW Madison), I get an average of 31ms for the Ohio server, and 35ms for the Virginia server through the WiFi. At home (wired connection, my router is a NETGEAR R6700 Nighthawk AC1750 Smart Dual Band WiFi Router), I get 41ms for the Ohio server and 61ms for the Virginia server.

My question is: Why is my ping so much worse on the Virginia server at home compared to when I'm at school? Is there anything I can do to fix this? I want to call my ISP and see if this is something they can help me with, but I want to make sure I fully understand what's going on before doing that (or if improving my ping is futile in this case).

I have also performed a tracert on both computers. I have tried my best to understand what is going on, but I don't have a lot of expertise with this stuff. I am hoping this can provide more insight into why I get poor ping from my home computer compared to my university.

University tracert

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Home tracert

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    What type of isp service do you have? Cable, fiber? etc.
    – Moab
    Commented Jul 31, 2019 at 22:23
  • Looks like I have cable.
    – spaderdabomb
    Commented Jul 31, 2019 at 22:45
  • Cable had less bandwidth when there are many more users that use the same cable in your neighborhood, see if ping times get better late at night like 3am.
    – Moab
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 0:22

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Edit: Here is a link to an explanation of traceroute output. In short the three numbers in ms (columns 2-4) are the output of pings (or something similar) to the individual nodes that your data packets need to travel to their destination. So basically, you can see how long each packet travels from your computer to the individual nodes in between.

For example, on the campus network it takes the package <1m to the wifi router (128.104.160.1) 1 ms to reach the university network ([...].net.wisc.edu) and from there 5 ms to reach the exit node into the internet ([...].internet2.edu) so in total the packets travel 6 ms through the campus network.

Therefore, your traceroute tells you that the difference of ~20 ms is mainly caused by your ISP:

In the university, your packages reach the exit node of the campus network ([...].internet2.edu) within 6ms.

Your ISP sends your packets through many more stops until they reach the exit node ([...].mn.charter.com) taking 21 ms.

Since you are already using a wired connection to your router which takes <1ms, there is not much you can do without talking to (or changing) your ISP. Some DSL internet providers offer a low-latency option (sometimes at extra cost). I myself am on an optical fiber (FTTH) connection in Germany and get 9ms ping times to google.de, 33 ms to amazonaws.eu and 101ms to amazon.com.

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  • Thanks, I think I'm understanding these traceroutes much better now. Does it strikes you as strange that Charter receives my traffic at 7ms, but it doesn't leave WI for another 8ms? Or that it's taking nearly 35ms to get from MN to VA? (Also, please let me know if I'm reading the hop locations incorrectly =) ) I will definitely talk to them about a low latency option and see if it exists, otherwise I know there is at least 1 more ISP in my location
    – spaderdabomb
    Commented Jul 31, 2019 at 23:27
  • I think the fact that Charter receives your traffic already after 7ms is a sign that you are already on a relatively low latency connection. The problem for you is that Charter then bounces your traffic around their own infrastructure for another ~ 14 ms before handing it over to the internet. I guess their exit node into the internet may not be close to your home. Overall, your ping times are actually not so bad though. Early DSL connections had ping times ~100-400 ms and a sattelite connection... don't ask ;-)
    – Thawn
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 1:06

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