How-to guides

To check if your internet is down, run a live connectivity test that contacts a server (not just your device's status), then confirm whether the problem is your whole connection, just your Wi-Fi, or a single website.

To test if DNS is working, try to resolve a domain name to an IP address. If the name fails but the site loads by its raw IP, DNS is the problem — not your connection.

To test your ping, measure the round-trip time for a small request to reach a server and come back. Under 50 ms is excellent, 50–100 ms is fine, and over 150 ms will feel laggy.

To check for an internet outage, first confirm your own connection works, then check the live status of major providers and the specific services you're trying to reach.

A good ping is under 50 ms. Below 20 ms is excellent, 20–50 ms is very good, 50–100 ms is fine for browsing and video calls, 100–150 ms is noticeable in anything real-time, and above 150 ms feels laggy. What counts as "good" depends on the task: competitive gaming needs under 50 ms, while streaming video is barely affected by ping at all.

Latency is the delay in getting data from one point to another. Ping is the round-trip measurement of that delay, and in everyday use the two words mean the same thing. Jitter is how much the number varies between measurements — and for calls and gaming, high jitter is usually worse than a high but steady ping.

To fix high ping, switch to a wired connection, stop background uploads and downloads, restart your router, and move closer to it or change Wi-Fi channel. Work through the fixes in order and retest after each one, so you know which change actually helped.