Measuring a Server's Speed

[jk321]

1.) Are the "ms" values received from a "PING" a good indication of a server's speed?

2.) If so, how grim are these numbers:

minimum=93 maximun=118 average=106

Thanks,
jk

[mnw]

I'm far from an expert in these matters but I always have an opinion, as humble as it may be. IMHO, "PING" ms have very little to do with a server's speed and more to do with network speed and contention. Given that a ping (at least not in a closed network) must travel multiple hops and hit multiple servers, f'get 'bout it. Of course, I could be wrong.

[Air]

mnw, you are dead on. Ping is a better measure of bandwidth performance than server performance.

[Brett_Tabke]

It is next to impossible to get a true idea of server speed. Your best educated guess is to hit a pure html page during the busiest net times of the day (9am eastern, and 5:30-6 eastern) and time them by hand. A ping check at the same time would tell you of any traffic congestion.

[DaveAtIFG]

JK - FYI, the ping results you included are pretty good in my experience. The "ms" numbers are the time it took to receive a response in milliseconds.

[Brett_Tabke]

Ping is ok, but a trace route could tell you more about the numbers.

C:\>ping webmasterworld.com
Pinging webmasterworld.com [216.71.185.24] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.71.185.24: bytes=32 time=137ms TTL=53
Reply from 216.71.185.24: bytes=32 time=129ms TTL=53
Reply from 216.71.185.24: bytes=32 time=128ms TTL=53
Reply from 216.71.185.24: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 216.71.185.24:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 126ms, Maximum = 137ms, Average = 130ms

C:\>tracert webmasterworld.com

Tracing route to webmasterworld.com [216.71.185.24]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

4 105 ms 102 ms 104 ms ins-core1-atm5-1.desm.netINS.net [167.142.57.65]
5 115 ms 112 ms 113 ms 901.Hssi4-0.GW1.MSP1.ALTER.NET [157.130.96.145]
6 122 ms 122 ms 121 ms 151.ATM1-0.XR2.CHI4.ALTER.NET [146.188.209.110]
7 120 ms 121 ms 120 ms 190.ATM7-0.XR2.CHI6.ALTER.NET [146.188.208.134]
8 122 ms 125 ms 124 ms 190.ATM9-0-0.GW2.CHI6.ALTER.NET [146.188.208.189]
9 128 ms 125 ms 124 ms UU-ds3.axxs.net [157.130.101.114]
10 130 ms 129 ms 129 ms webmasterworld.com [216.71.185.24]

Trace complete.

Notice that anything slow isn't with the server system, it is all before the system.

[DaveAtIFG]

JK - Check out [netmechanics.com...]
They have a free service that monitors your server for 8 hours, every 15 minutes, and then emails you the results.

I think this might be just what you're looking for.

[bartek]

Also try AnySpeed from [pysoft.com...] and run it for a while.

[cirelle]

Hi all,

From my experience, pings, tracert or any other remote query to a server will only give you bandwidth measurement as there is no way to tell how fast the server served up the pages.

In order to get server performance numbers you have to have a server compoonent running on the server and you must have access to that component.

Addendum: a ping ms result varies with your connection to the net. 56K will result in bigger ms numbers than say T1.

my penny

c

[Brett_Tabke]

Absolutly cirelle, the problem is often having a site to access and check. Most of the host put their own home page on the fastest server there is in the bunch. Hard to get any idea of what the server itself does.

That said, here is a home spun page of high q resources for various server/hosting stuff. Looks like a legit page (not one of those raided odp pages we've gotten used to seeing)

[softwareqatest.com]