With the Internet speed become faster and faster, why does the online game ping/latency seemed stagnant?

Question

With the Internet speed become faster and faster, why does the online game ping/latency seemed stagnant?

In: 3

Answer 1

Think of it like a highway.

The speed limit is 60 MPH. It’ll take an hour to drive 60 miles if there’s no traffic getting in your way.

Now take that same highway and add 30 lanes. The speed limit is still 60, it’ll still take an hour to drive 60 miles. But now the highway can handle significantly more cars before traffic starts getting in your way.

Ping/Latency depends on how fast the routers between you and them are and how much distance the data has to actually travel and how fast that data can travel — copper wires like co-ax is much slower than fiber which uses pulses of light between repeater stations, which in turn is slower than direct transmission which travels the speed of light and isn’t slowed down by having to be repeated ever 30 miles or so but is generally limited by line of sight and the ultimate line-of-sight are satellites… which are about 0.17 seconds away which is why satellite internet has such terrible ping.