Would it even be worth buying a new NIC for a better ping?

Mirana · Post by **Mirana** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 7:14 pm

Hey everyone, been reading around here and decided to sign up =)

I'm wondering if someone knows how much network cards actually do when determining pings. I have a 25mbps connection, clean computer. No extra processes running besides the mandatory ones. But I'm using a integrated realtek pcie card.

My ping from West Canada to Europe is about 217ms according to pingplotter. Any help appreciated.

nwrickert · Post by **nwrickert** » Sun Aug 05, 2012 2:03 am

Unless it is badly broken, the NIC would account for less than 1 ms of ping time.

Post by **Philip** » Sun Aug 05, 2012 10:44 am

mwrickert is correct, for most cases NICs do not add/cause much latency. The only exception with some built-in network adapters would be if your CPU/IO/RAM resources (or upstream bandwidth) are being used to the max by some applications, it may introduce some delay.

I'd try to run a traceroute to your destination, and see which hop adds how much latency to the route.
Sometimes misplacing routers close to other devices (cable/dsl modems, sources of EMI) may introduce latency, coiled Cat5 network cables, etc.

However, latency usually adds up the path to your ISP and their backbones.

I hope this helps