What are the PING times on mobile? Except for gaming, these are usually not relevant in the magnitude mentioned. And gaming via mobile or WiFi is a no-go anyway.

In addition, the PING times are not always representative. In many networks, the ICMP protocol used for PING is often given the lowest priority.

For me, the latency is always around 35 to 40ms, even in the middle of the night. Although <20ms should actually be possible with LTE-Advanced. I even think that this was the case until around December 2015. I have no idea why this is different now. I use Remote Desktop regularly and it was noticeably more pleasant until December.

I tried the hotline but had no success. There would be no problems online.

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@hed wrote:

What are the PING times of mobile interest? Except for gaming, these are usually not relevant in the magnitude mentioned.

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I have a different opinion. With a short latency, you can surf noticeably faster. The difference is/was clearly noticeable with the (former) infinity XS subscription. With EDGE there was sometimes almost the same data rate as with 4G. Despite this, the pages loaded massively faster. The Facebook app, for example, also benefits greatly from short latency. You notice a difference, especially at low speeds.

At home I have WiFi (10 MBit/s via VDSL2, 8ms) and 4G (approx. 45 MBit/s, 35ms). Many things still feel faster via WiFi and many pages load faster.

Applications such as Skype and Remote Desktop only really work meaningfully with low latency.

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@speed85 wrote:

Hmmm, it must really be overload.

But annoying - unfortunately it lasts until after midnight during the week and the Swisscom hotspot also seems to be overloaded or at least overloaded…

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According to the Swisscom slide set:

https://www.swisscom.ch/content/dam/swisscom/de/about/medien/faktencheck/documents/20140212_Data VolumeMobile Network.pdf.res/20140212_Data VolumeMobile Network.pdf

The LTE/4G mobile network is very busy, especially in the evening until midnight.

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@hed wrote:

What are the PING times of mobile interest? Except for gaming, these are usually not relevant in the magnitude mentioned.

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The quality of service (QoS) of a data connection is influenced by numerous parameters: maximum data transfer rate, packet round-trip time (PING times), packet loss rate, packet corruption, packet repetitions, jitter and so on.

Short packet turnaround times lead to better quality of service in two-way communication (e.g. surfing the Internet) (e.g. faster web page loading in the web browser).

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@hed wrote:

In addition, the PING times are not always representative. In many networks, the ICMP protocol used for PING is often given the lowest priority.

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Yes, that’s exactly why PING is particularly suitable as a tool for detecting congestion in the network. If the quality of service of a specific service is to be measured, other measurement tools are required (e.g. IPerf3).

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@Googlook wrote:

For me the latency is always around 35 to 40ms, even in the middle of the night. Although <20ms should actually be possible with LTE-Advanced. I even think that this was the case until around December 2015. I have no idea why this is different now.

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My own ping measurements in the Swisscom and Sunrise mobile networks show me that the packet turnaround time/latency/RTT is generally lower in the Sunrise mobile network, but the packet loss rate is significantly higher. Apparently the mobile phone operators can optimize/tune their mobile network to their own needs:

-> Swisscom: Higher latency, but lower packet loss rate

-> Sunrise: Lower latency at the expense of higher packet loss rate

Which is better (lower latency or fewer packet losses) must be assessed for each individual use case and depends on individual needs. There is also a similar optimization step for ADSL (Fastpath):

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastPath

Here are some measurement examples:

Swisscom

Ping frisal.switch.ch

2G/EDGE:
Ping statistics for 130.59.10.36:
Packets: Sent = 1000, Received = 1000, Lost = 0
(0% loss),
Approximate times in milliseconds:
Minimum = 121ms, Maximum = 1577ms, Average = 452ms

3G/HSPA+:
Ping statistics for 130.59.10.36:
Packets: Sent = 1000, Received = 1000, Lost = 0
(0% loss),
Approximate times in milliseconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 361ms, Average = 83ms

Sunrise Ping Response Times (RTT).

2G/EGDE:
— frisal.switch.ch ping statistics —
1000 packets transmitted, 957 received, 4% packet loss, time 195193ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 172.478/195.327/233.737/12.406 ms, pipe 2, ipg/ewma 195.388/198.461 ms

3G/HSPA+
— frisal.switch.ch ping statistics —
1000 packets transmitted, 996 received, 0% packet loss, time 55081ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 37,616/55,314/141,788/13,220 ms, pipe 3, ipg/ewma 55,136/54,711 ms

4G/LTE
— frisal.switch.ch ping statistics —
1000 packets transmitted, 987 received, 1% packet loss, time 42938ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 23.201/41.912/225.226/14.644 ms, pipe 3, ipg/ewma 42.981/41.494 ms

Yes, of course, it can work, but it doesn’t necessarily have to at all times.

In any case, all services, whether via cable/fiber or mobile for private customers, are just best effort anyway. This means that no provider gives any guarantees regarding speed or latency.

Things are different in the business customer area; depending on the contract, certain parameters are defined or guaranteed (SLA).