I need to test the ballpark connection latency between two states - Any sites or easy ways to do this?

Question

I am in Kansas I need to test latency to Oregon. Assuming I don't know anyone in Oregeon or know what hosts are pingable and also in oregeon is there any handy tool for this?

It would be even better if I could select to arbitrary locations and get average latency times on the wire between hosts located in two geopolitcally seperated locations.

You know that the only thing ping really tests is whether or not ping works, right? — Rob Moir, Jun 14 '12 at 18:02

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 14 '12 at 18:02

Physical locations don't correlate cleanly with network locations. One carrier might take you from Oregon to Kansas via a single POP on each side and a dedicated circuit that happens to physically run directly between the two sites while another carrier might hand off to an intermediary transit provider that backhauls the traffic to Virginia to hand off to a carrier that routes through Texas to go back up to Kansas. Best of all, either path could be valid at a given time depending on fault and traffic conditions.

Hyppy · Answer 2 · 2012-06-14T18:04:00.260

1

You can test basic latency with ping, smokeping, iperf, et cetera.

If you don't know what the endpoint you're testing for is, then there's not much point in testing something else entirely. Your traffic could go through a completely different network somewhere and have wildly different results.

edited Jun 14 '12 at 18:04

answered Jun 14 '12 at 17:58

Hyppy

15,608
1
38
59

I need to test the ballpark connection latency between two states - Any sites or easy ways to do this?

2 Answers2