How to Test Your Ping Before Picking a Location

Measure latency with ping and traceroute on Windows or macOS, understand what the numbers mean, and choose the right GuavaHost location.

5 min read · Updated Sep 23, 2026 · By GuavaHost Team

Your server's location sets the ping every player gets, and it is the one thing no amount of hardware can fix later. This guide shows you how to measure ping with the tools already on your computer, what the numbers mean, and how to use them to pick between our five locations: Dallas, Limburg, Gravelines, Warsaw and Sydney.

What ping measures

Ping is the time for a small packet of data to travel from your computer to a server and back, in milliseconds (ms). Two more numbers matter alongside it:

• Jitter. How much the ping jumps around. A steady 80 ms often feels better than a ping that swings between 40 and 150.
• Packet loss. The share of packets that never come back. Even 1 to 2 percent can cause rubber-banding and missed actions.

What the numbers mean in game

This is a general guide. Fast shooters like Counter-Strike 2 are far more sensitive than survival and sandbox games.

Why distance sets a floor

Signals in fibre-optic cable travel at roughly two thirds of the speed of light, about 200,000 km per second. That works out to about 1 ms of round trip for every 100 km of cable, at the very best. Real routes are longer than a straight line and every router on the way adds a little, so real pings sit above these floors:

No host can beat physics, which is why picking the location nearest your players matters more than any other setting.

Step 1: check the estimate at checkout

On the location step at checkout, each location shows an estimated ping with a green, yellow or red marker. It is worked out from your approximate location and the distance to each machine, not measured live, so treat it as a quick guide. It also only reflects where you are, so if your players live elsewhere, base the choice on them.

Step 2: measure with ping

To test a real address, you need an IP to ping: your own server's IP from the top of the panel if you already have one, or a friend's server in the location you are considering. In the examples below, replace 203.0.113.10 with the real IP.

On Windows:

1. Press the Windows key, type cmd and press Enter.
2. Type ping -n 20 203.0.113.10 and press Enter.
3. At the end, read the summary: Lost = 0 (0% loss) and Minimum = 21ms, Maximum = 30ms, Average = 23ms.

On macOS:

1. Open Terminal (search for it with Spotlight).
2. Type ping -c 20 203.0.113.10 and press Enter.
3. Read the last two lines: 0.0% packet loss and round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 21.1/23.4/30.2/2.1 ms. The last figure, stddev, is a good measure of jitter.

On Linux the command is the same as macOS.

Look at the average for ping, the gap between minimum and maximum for jitter, and the loss figure. Run it a couple of times, including at your usual play time in the evening, when home networks are busiest.

One catch: some servers and networks do not answer ping at all. If every line says Request timed out, that does not prove the server is down. The in-game ping is always the final word.

Step 3: find where the delay comes from with traceroute

Traceroute lists every router your data passes through and the time to reach each one.

• Windows: tracert 203.0.113.10
• macOS and Linux: traceroute 203.0.113.10

How to read it:

• Look for a big jump in time that stays high on every hop after it. That is where the distance is, often an ocean crossing, and it is normal.
• A single hop with a high time, where the hops after it are lower again, just means that router is slow to answer traceroute. Ignore it.
• Lines of * * * mean a router did not reply. That is common and harmless if later hops respond.
• If the times jump early, in the first two or three hops, the delay is inside your own home network or your ISP.

On Windows, pathping 203.0.113.10 combines both tools and shows packet loss at each hop. It takes a few minutes to finish.

Step 4: test for your players, not just you

Ask a few of your regular players to run the same ping and send you their averages. Then pick the location that suits most of them. As a starting point:

If your group is split across continents, go with the majority, or with whoever plays most.

Try it for real, and move later if you need to

The most reliable test is joining an actual server in game. Every new GuavaHost order comes with a 48-hour money-back guarantee, so you can order in your best-guess location and check real in-game ping with your group. If your players move over time, you can change your server's location later.

Improve your own side

• Use a wired connection instead of Wi-Fi where you can.
• Pause big downloads, uploads and streams while you play.
• Turn off a VPN, which often routes your traffic somewhere far away first.

For more on telling ping from server lag, see lag vs ping, and for the checkout side of picking a region, see choosing a server location.

Still stuck? Jump into our Discord at discord.gg/GuavaHost and the team will help you out.

• ping
• latency
• traceroute
• server location
• region
• network

Still need help? Our team is online 24/7 to answer questions.

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