Latency is an important factor for activities that require constant back-and-forth internet traffic. As far as home internet connections are concerned, that pretty much means online gaming and, to a lesser degree, video calls.
While a high latency can negatively impact other areas of your online life, things have to get pretty bad before you notice.
The meaning of latency
Latency is the measurement of how quickly your device can get a response after sending a signal, generally measured in milliseconds (ms). A common analogy is a call and response – your device says 'Hi', another device somewhere (usually a server or data centre) says 'Hello'. Both greetings take time to travel from the sender to the receiver, and the time between sending the 'Hi' and receiving the 'Hello' is your latency.
In reality, the 'Hi' and 'Hello' are just data packets, but you get the idea.
What is ping?
‘Ping’ and ‘latency’ are often used interchangeably, but they’re technically different. Latency is the final measurement, while 'ping' is the name of the test needed to get your latency. For example, you might perform a ping test then discover there’s a latency of 21ms between your device and a given server.
But, for the most part, if you see 'ping' used online, you can take it to mean latency.
Internet providers with low latency
Once per quarter, the ACCC releases data that includes average latencies for internet providers based on their NBN plans. We used this data to update the rankings below.
Provider | All Hours | Busy Hours | See NBN 100 plan |
---|---|---|---|
Exetel | 7.5ms | 7.5ms | Go to Site |
Leaptel | 7.9ms | 8ms | - |
Superloop | 8.1ms | 8.2ms | Go to Site |
Vodafone | 9ms | 9.1ms | |
Optus | 10ms | 10ms | |
Aussie Broadband | 10ms | 10.1ms | |
TPG | 10.1ms | 10.3ms | Go to Site |
Dodo | 10.4ms | 10.5ms | Go to Site |
iPrimus | 10.4ms | 10.5ms | Go to Site |
iiNet | 10.6ms | 10.7ms | Go to Site |
Telstra | 10.8ms | 10.9ms |
You can compare the above latency scores to the table below, in which we’ve listed the fastest NBN plans in our database of 33 internet providers, ranked by their typical evening speeds.
Latency for NBN technologies
The ACCC's quarterly report also includes average latencies for most Fixed-Line NBN technologies. FTTP and FTTC have the lowest pings, while FTTN latency is unsurprisingly the highest at almost double. HFC sits in the middle, despite its faster average download and upload speed performance.
NBN technology | All hours | Packet loss |
---|---|---|
FTTN | 15.2ms | 0.19% |
HFC | 10.1ms | 0.19% |
FTTC | 7.5ms | 0.14% |
FTTP | 7.4ms | 0.12% |
Data from the ACCC's June 2024 Measuring Broadband Australia report. Packet loss rounded to two decimal places.
Fixed Wireless performance can vary considerably, and Satellite NBN tends to sit around the 600ms mark. But, given your signal has to travel 36,000km to the satellite and back (twice), that’s probably forgivable.
Latency vs. internet speed
While latency is a measure of how fast your device completes a ping test, it’s not usually referred to as speed. When people talk about 'internet speed', they’re usually referring to download and upload speeds, which are measures of how quickly you can send or receive data. These are measured in Megabits per second (Mbps).
Internet speeds are far more important than latency for most day-to-day activities because they allow you to download or upload more data simultaneously, which speeds up how quickly you can send or receive data.
While you can pick the speed of your NBN plan, you can't explicitly pick your latency. This relies on a number of factors such as your provider's connection to the broader internet and your NBN technology type.
Given most home internet plans in Australia have a good ping for pretty much anything but gaming, latency isn't a concern for most people. But if you’re looking for the best NBN plans for gamers, then it can play big role in your decision.
Why is low latency important?
Having a low latency or low ping means your device is sending and receiving data without much lag. When it comes to at-home usage, this is only particularly important for online gaming.
Low pings for gaming
Gaming requires a constant stream of data to and from your device or gaming console. The lower your latency, the less lag there is between you performing an action and it registering in the game world. Or between someone else performing an action and you being able to react to it.
If your latency is too high, a server might struggle to figure out what to do with you. Remember, every other player is constantly sending data, each with a different latency. The server juggles these inputs to create an acceptable 'now'. If there’s too much lag between your device and the server, it can decide it’s too hard (or a bad experience for other players) to accommodate your laggy load.
It can also affect video calls, but only once it passes 50ms or so, which is pretty bad. If your video call has lots of lag, it might be because there are many participants and the software is struggling to handle it, or from some other factor outside of your internet connection, such as problems with your router or a variety of other factors.
In terms of your NBN provider, anything below 10ms is fantastic. But most maintain an average peak hour latency under 15ms and, really, are you going to notice a difference of five thousandths of a second?
Latency and video calls
Latency doesn’t add meaningful lag for video calls until you get to around 50ms or higher, which you’re unlikely to experience when calling elsewhere within Australia from any fixed-line NBN or 5G home internet connection. If you do get higher than 50ms on fixed-line NBN, something is very wrong and you should contact the technical support team for your internet provider to see if they can detect any problems on their end.
Ping test
If you’d like to do a ping test to find out your latency, you can use our internet speed test tool.
Just be sure to click 'Show more info' once the initial results appear.
It’s a good idea to perform a few tests at different times throughout the day to get a better overview of your performance.
Troubles with latency can sometimes be intermittent, so it’s best to have as much data as possible.
Also be sure to check your download and upload speed results. If either is close to maximum, this could be the reason for your high ping.
How to lower ping
A low ping is the holy grail for any gamer. While there’s little you can do to fix problems with your ISP or the network, there are quite a few factors inside the home that can increase your ping.
Ethernet vs. WiFi
A direct ethernet cable connection to your router will almost always provide lower latency than WiFi. Just how much depends on the quality of your WiFi hardware and the positioning of your router compared to your computer or console, but it can be 10ms or (much) more. Ethernet also provides a stabler connection and introduces less packet loss.
Check your router
Routers can be a source of poor latency for a few reasons. If yours is old, it might simply be past its use-by-date, but you can try a full factory reset before consigning it to the e-waste bin.
If your router is plugged into a cheap or dodgy power board, it might not be getting a consistent supply of electricity. Try plugging it directly into a wall socket and see what happens.
For WiFi connections, make sure your router is positioned well. If there are too many obstacles like walls, doors, appliances, and mirrors, for example, between the closest router (or mesh node) and your computer or console, this is going to cause problems. And please, don't hide your router in a cupboard or behind furniture.
If good router placement isn't possible with your home's layout, you could try upgrading to a mesh WiFi system.
Check for packet loss
Data is sent in small groups called 'packets', some of which can get lost in transit. If your packet loss is small, the devices on each end of the connection can fill in the blanks with educated guesswork. But if too many are lost, it can cause high latency and lag.
Packet loss can be caused by a range of factors, but this is often to do with either your router or your connection to it (such as a dodgy ethernet cable or poor WiFi reception).
Ideally, your packet loss will be 0%, but it shouldn't be above 2% without cause. You can check your packet loss using Cloudflare's handy tool, though it can take a minute or so to complete.
Do you have enough free bandwidth?
While more Mbps doesn’t mean lower latency, maxing out your download or upload speed (bandwidth) will launch your ping through the roof. Next time you're having ping troubles, do an internet speed test to see if your downloads or uploads are close to their limits.
Think about any potential automated updates or downloads happening in the background, or uploads such as cloud storage syncing (OneDrive, iCloud and Google Photos are common culprits, but it could be any cloud service).
If your household has too many internet demands, you might consider upgrading your internet plan. NBN 100 plans in particular are much better value than they used to be compared to NBN 50 plans, thanks to changes in NBN Co’s wholesale pricing.
Most NBN speed tiers focus on download speeds, but if uploads are your problem then NBN 100/40 plans are a good bet. They have 40Mbps max uploads compared to the 25Mbps of NBN 250 plans.
And if you’re in really dire straits, you can always look at NBN 1000 plans, which come with upload speed as fast as 50Mbps.
These are the cheapest NBN plans in our database of 33 internet providers for the faster speed tiers:
Related Articles
Sign up for telco news, money-saving deals and more.
Internet Plans by State
- Internet Plans in ACT
- Internet Plans in NSW
- Internet Plans in NT
- Internet Plans in QLD
- Internet Plans in SA
- Internet Plans in TAS
- Internet Plans in VIC
- Internet Plans in WA