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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff, a production from I heart radio.

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Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I heart radio,

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Speaker 1: and how the Tech Are you? You know, there's a

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Speaker 1: good chance you've heard the Term Ping before. If you're

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Speaker 1: a golfer, you probably associated with equipment like clubs and bags,

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Speaker 1: but that's not what I'm talking about today. If you're

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Speaker 1: a submariner, well, your concept of paying is closer to

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Speaker 1: what I'll be talking about in this episode, and specifically

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Speaker 1: in this episode, I'm talking about Ping as a way

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Speaker 1: to judge network speed between two different machines. Now, with

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Speaker 1: some stuff that you know we use in our technical world,

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Speaker 1: the history can be a little muddled or hidden. Right.

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Speaker 1: Might be one of those things where we have some

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Speaker 1: common tool that we all use, but no one really

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Speaker 1: documented where that tool came from or who first came

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Speaker 1: up with it, and so we have to use a

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Speaker 1: lot of qualifiers to talk about it. But in this

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Speaker 1: case we can point to a specific person as the

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Speaker 1: originator of the paying function, at least the first paying function,

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Speaker 1: and that person was Mike Muss sadly, must passed away

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Speaker 1: in two thousand in a car accident. So uh, that

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Speaker 1: is really a tragedy. must seemed like a really entertaining

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Speaker 1: and innovative guy, based upon the stuff I've read that

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Speaker 1: he wrote. Must had studied sonar and radar while he

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Speaker 1: was in college. He had been modeling those systems and

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Speaker 1: he worked for a while at the Ballistic Research Laboratory,

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Speaker 1: or B R L, which we also have to talk

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Speaker 1: about in the past tense. The army established the army

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Speaker 1: research laboratory in Nineteen two. That would absorb the old brl.

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Speaker 1: So the B R L is no more. It is

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Speaker 1: part of the A R L. Anyway, while must was

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Speaker 1: working at the B R l, he noticed something hinky

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Speaker 1: seemed to be going on with the I P network

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Speaker 1: within that organization. Now, this was in nineteen eighty three

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Speaker 1: and at that point, I think you're most folks had

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Speaker 1: never even heard of internet protocol, or I p. that's

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Speaker 1: what I p means in this case, not intellectual property,

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Speaker 1: but Internet Protocol. I Doun't that most people had ever

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Speaker 1: heard of that back in nineteen three. I know I

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Speaker 1: had never heard it. The concept of the Internet was

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Speaker 1: a pretty foreign one to anyone not working in a

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Speaker 1: military organization, a research institute or a number of universities

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Speaker 1: that we're doing pioneering work in the field. Computer networking

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Speaker 1: in general was something that was a pretty foreign concept

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Speaker 1: to folks. This was early on when people could actually

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Speaker 1: get access to a personal computer, let alone the thought

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Speaker 1: of how do I connect this computer to that computer?

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Speaker 1: So it would take a decade before the rest of

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Speaker 1: US would start to understand that you could actually connect

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Speaker 1: computers together and make a network and then create networks

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Speaker 1: together to create a massive interconnected system, a k a

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Speaker 1: the Internet. But must was really familiar with computer networks.

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Speaker 1: He worked on the IP network at Brl all the time,

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Speaker 1: and so when he knows things weren't quite behaving the

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Speaker 1: way they usually should, he decided to find out what

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Speaker 1: was going on and to do that he needed a

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Speaker 1: diagnostic tool. That didn't exist, so he had to create

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Speaker 1: a program to do it. Now he had heard about

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Speaker 1: other methods of testing things like network speed between machines

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Speaker 1: that used other methodologies, but those weren't really applicable to

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Speaker 1: his network. So he had to make the tool from

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Speaker 1: scratch and he programmed it on a UNIX system. This

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Speaker 1: is a family of operating systems that computer science scientists

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Speaker 1: at the Bell Labs Research Center of a t and

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Speaker 1: t created back in the nineteen sixties uh and then

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Speaker 1: ended up releasing it for others to use in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. So your average person would likely find vanilla

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Speaker 1: UNIX to be intimidating, because it is a system that

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Speaker 1: programmers made for other programmers for the purposes of being

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Speaker 1: able to create programs within this framework and then used

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Speaker 1: on those machines or similar machines. It is not a

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Speaker 1: particularly user friendly operating system, at least not if you're

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Speaker 1: someone who's unused to command prompts as opposed to graphical

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Speaker 1: user interfaces or Gooey's Um. Back in the day, when

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Speaker 1: I first started using muters, command prompts were the way

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Speaker 1: to go. In fact, I remember being incredibly reluctant to

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Speaker 1: move from the DOSS system that was in use on

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Speaker 1: IBM compatibles back in the day to migrating to Windows,

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Speaker 1: because I thought windows was a huge waste of resources,

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Speaker 1: that your computer had to use so many resources just

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Speaker 1: to run the operating system that it completely hindered the

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Speaker 1: sort of programs you could run on that sort of computer,

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Speaker 1: and I did not like the idea of moving from

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Speaker 1: doss to Windows. These days, if you put me in

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Speaker 1: front of a line prompt kind of of operating system,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure I would be completely lost. UH, as I

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Speaker 1: get older, it gets harder to navigate those kinds of things. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: what must wanted to do was create a small program

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Speaker 1: that could measure the quote unquote, distance between two different machines.

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Speaker 1: Except we're not really talking about physical distance here, although

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Speaker 1: that can be a factor and we'll get to it. Instead,

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Speaker 1: what we're really talking about is the amount of time

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Speaker 1: it takes for one machine to send a message to

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Speaker 1: a second machine and then receive a message from that

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Speaker 1: second machine. So how long does it take you to

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Speaker 1: send a message out and get a reply back? In

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Speaker 1: that way, it's a lot like an echo. So an

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Speaker 1: echo is when you make or you hear a sound

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Speaker 1: and then you hear that sound repeated. And it happens

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Speaker 1: when sound waves bounce off of some hard, smooth surface,

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Speaker 1: and the smoother and harder the surface, the better it

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Speaker 1: is for creating echoes. So let's say that you are

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Speaker 1: in a canyon, maybe it's a box canyon, and you

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Speaker 1: got a red base on one end and a blue

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Speaker 1: Basse on the other, and no one can explain why.

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Speaker 1: So you're in this box canyon and you decide to

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Speaker 1: shout text stuff, rules or you know something that you

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Speaker 1: would actually shout. Well, the echoes you would hear are

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Speaker 1: actually the sound waves that you generated that came from you.

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Speaker 1: Those air fluctuations originated from you and then they bounced

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Speaker 1: back to you after they hit the canyon walls. So

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Speaker 1: if you're in a place where there are no hard,

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Speaker 1: smooth surfaces, you're not going to get an echo. Doesn't

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Speaker 1: matter how loudly you scream. There are no surfaces for

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Speaker 1: the sound to bounce off of and come back to you.

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Speaker 1: It's just gonna travel outward until it's essentially too weak

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Speaker 1: for it to be heard by at least human ears. Now,

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Speaker 1: when we talk about stuff like sonar, we're talking about

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Speaker 1: using sound to get an idea about how far away

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Speaker 1: objects are from the sonar mechanism. And if we break

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Speaker 1: down what sonar is from a technical standpoint, essentially what

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Speaker 1: you have is a speaker that emits the sound and

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Speaker 1: a microphone that picks up echoes of the sound and

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Speaker 1: then some word of the system to calculate the amount

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Speaker 1: of time between making a sound and getting the echo.

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Speaker 1: These systems could be human powered or it could be

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Speaker 1: modern systems use computers, but in the old days it

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Speaker 1: could actually be someone with a stopwatch and very quickly

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Speaker 1: reacting in order to get an idea of how long

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Speaker 1: it took to send a sound out and to get

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Speaker 1: the echo back. This is really useful if, for example,

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Speaker 1: you're in a submarine that doesn't have windows. Those submarines

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Speaker 1: don't because windows are a point of failure and you

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Speaker 1: don't want those when you're in a metal tube that

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Speaker 1: goes under the water. So you use the sonar to

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Speaker 1: beam out a sound and you know how fast sound

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Speaker 1: travels through water. It's a standard sort of thing. It

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Speaker 1: actually travels faster through water than it does through air.

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Speaker 1: We typically say that sound travels at about three forty

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Speaker 1: three per second through the air, but in water it's

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Speaker 1: one thousand four hundred eight meters per second. So if

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Speaker 1: you send out a sound in a specific direction and

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Speaker 1: you time how long it takes for the sound to

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Speaker 1: come back to you and then you essentially divided by two,

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Speaker 1: you know how far away you are from, say, and

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Speaker 1: underwater cliff face. It's pretty common to call the sonar

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Speaker 1: sound a Ping, because that's what it sounds like. If

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Speaker 1: you've seen the film adaptation of the hunt for Red October,

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Speaker 1: you know there's a scene in which sean connery, who's

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Speaker 1: playing a Soviet Submarine Commander, tells his Sonar Operator reverify

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Speaker 1: our range to target one ping only. Now, in that

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Speaker 1: case he's using the Ping to secretly communicate with the Americans,

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Speaker 1: but he's selling his sonar operator the reason is just

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Speaker 1: to make sure they know exactly how far the Americans

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Speaker 1: are in case they need to fire upon them anyway.

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Speaker 1: That's why must called his tool a ping. It was

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Speaker 1: using a similar sort of approach. A message goes out

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Speaker 1: from on computer to a different computer and the message

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Speaker 1: essentially says hey, send us back to me, and the

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Speaker 1: target computer follows instructions and sends the message back. The

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Speaker 1: amount of time between sending the message and receiving the

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Speaker 1: reply can give you an idea about the network speed

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Speaker 1: between those two machines. If it's slower than expected, something's

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Speaker 1: going wrong. Maybe there's too much traffic on the network,

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Speaker 1: maybe there is an actual switch that's down somewhere on

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Speaker 1: the network and it necessitates traffic to route around the issue.

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Speaker 1: So it's really a diagnostic tool for measuring path latency.

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Speaker 1: We'll talk more about latency in just a second, but

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Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All right, let's talk

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Speaker 1: about latency. You can think of latency as the delay

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Speaker 1: between the cause of something and it's effect. I always

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Speaker 1: use video game examples for this, because anyone who has

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Speaker 1: played enough video games has experienced this at one point

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Speaker 1: or another. Um and it's, you know, one of the

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Speaker 1: contexts in which we really talk about paying. Anyway, in

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Speaker 1: most video games you really want the game to respond instantly,

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Speaker 1: or at least appear to be instant according to our

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Speaker 1: limitations of perception when you work the controls. So when

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Speaker 1: you push that jump button, you want that lousy little

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Speaker 1: plumber to jump and squash that Gumba Gush. Darn it

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Speaker 1: when there's a delay. So you push the jump button

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Speaker 1: but the plumber waits a second before jumping. It makes

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Speaker 1: the game way more difficult to play. Some Games do

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Speaker 1: the so on purpose. Sometimes it's up to the player

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Speaker 1: to try and learn and adjust to the timing of

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Speaker 1: the game, and it was all part of the design.

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Speaker 1: Other Games didn't do it on purpose. They're just poorly made.

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Speaker 1: Or they're running on inadequate machines, and so there's this

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Speaker 1: latency introduced in to the experience and there's a lag

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Speaker 1: between input and output. Now must decide to create his

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Speaker 1: ping tool back in nine three on a whim. He

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Speaker 1: didn't intend for it to be some sort of glorified

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Speaker 1: feature that would be put to use countless times afterwards.

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Speaker 1: He just thought it was an interesting exercise. He described

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Speaker 1: the Ping Program as a quote, thousand line hack end quote,

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Speaker 1: and he wrote it in a single evening and he

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Speaker 1: says that if he had known how much it was

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Speaker 1: going to be used moving forward, he might have spent

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Speaker 1: a little more time and effort in designing it. He

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Speaker 1: also mentions that, of course, in Classic Uh fate, by

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Speaker 1: the time he finished designing the tool, the original issue

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Speaker 1: that made him think about it in the first place

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Speaker 1: had already been fixed. Someone else had gone into the network,

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Speaker 1: discovered it and fixed the problem. But the tools usefulness

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Speaker 1: obviously went beyond the single use case that inspired must

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Speaker 1: to create it. Must also joked about how people tried

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Speaker 1: to interpret Ping, the word paying, P I N G,

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Speaker 1: as an acronym. There was a common assumption in the

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Speaker 1: network Admin field that Ping stood for packet Internet grouper,

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Speaker 1: but must dismiss that right away. It was pretty common

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Speaker 1: to create wacky acronyms and government projects. In fact, that's

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Speaker 1: still true to this day. If you look at any

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Speaker 1: law or bill that has like a cool or cool

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Speaker 1: ish name associated with it, there's a good chance that

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Speaker 1: name is said to represent a tortured acronym, and I

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Speaker 1: am positive that in the overall majority of cases lawmakers

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Speaker 1: come up with a name for the legislation. First they

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Speaker 1: come up with their cool name and then, retroactively they

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Speaker 1: try to justify the name by creating a phrase for

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Speaker 1: which the name is supposedly an acronym, and it's almost

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Speaker 1: always terrible anyway. must say that's what people were trying

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Speaker 1: to do with paying, but he was adamant pain justed

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Speaker 1: for paying, like with Sonar. Now, if you're an online Gamer,

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Speaker 1: you're likely very aware of the importance of paying. With

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Speaker 1: online multiplayer games, each player is connecting to a game

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Speaker 1: server and to be clear, multiplayer games have lots of servers. Right.

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Speaker 1: Each game has tons of servers, and it's just that

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Speaker 1: a player logs into a single server into which lots

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Speaker 1: of other players are also logged, and once a server

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Speaker 1: reaches capacity, players will have to connect to other servers. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty common practice to try and log into servers

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Speaker 1: that are geographically close to the player, because that helps

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Speaker 1: cut back on latency. Now, it's not always true that

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Speaker 1: the closest server provides the fastest data speeds between the

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Speaker 1: client machine, in other words the Gamer's rig, and the

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Speaker 1: server itself, but it's usually the case. If you log

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Speaker 1: into a server that's halfway across the world from you,

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Speaker 1: that means the messages coming from your machine and going

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Speaker 1: to your machine have to travel halfway across the world

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Speaker 1: and while data moves very, very fast, it's not instantaneous,

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Speaker 1: so you start to encounter a bit of latency. That

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Speaker 1: latency or lag means there is a delay between when

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Speaker 1: a Gamer does something in their game on their machine

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Speaker 1: and when the server finds out about it, and sometimes

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Speaker 1: that lag is enough to cause problems in gameplay. In fact,

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Speaker 1: the LAG does not have to be very long for

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Speaker 1: issues to pop up. Well, less than a second in fact.

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Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. So let's say you and

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Speaker 1: I are playing in a one on one first person

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Speaker 1: shooter game. It's me versus you, and you've got me

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Speaker 1: in your sights. You're clear across the map. You've spotted me.

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Speaker 1: You've got a sniper rifle, so you take aim at

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Speaker 1: me and you shoot from your perspective. You've got a

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Speaker 1: clear shot. There's no way you can miss. But then

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Speaker 1: there's the latency. Let's say my connection is lagging just

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Speaker 1: a bit, that I've got a very high ping rate

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Speaker 1: to the game server and in fact, while you appear

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Speaker 1: to be aiming straight at me, because from your side

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Speaker 1: the game server thinks that is where I'm at, on

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Speaker 1: my side I was doing the old Serpentinam and the

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Speaker 1: server gets my input commands and the game essentially decides

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Speaker 1: that your shots don't connect because it turns out I

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Speaker 1: wasn't really in the spot where you were aiming the

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Speaker 1: whole time. There are some gamers who use this kind

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Speaker 1: of thing to cheat at Games. So back in the

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Speaker 1: early days of Halo, to Multiplayer, there was a tactic

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Speaker 1: called stand by. A lot of modems had a standby

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Speaker 1: feature that would let you temporarily pause a connection to

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Speaker 1: a server. So it's like disconnecting, but it was just

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Speaker 1: doing it for a moment. so by using it strategically Halo,

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Speaker 1: two players could appear to be in one place in

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Speaker 1: the game because the game server couldn't verify where the

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Speaker 1: player was and so would just essentially keep the player

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Speaker 1: on the course that they were on before the connection severed,

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Speaker 1: but it would hold off on dropping the player entirely

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Speaker 1: in case the connection repaired itself. And so that meant

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Speaker 1: that if other players were trying to do damage to

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Speaker 1: that character, nothing would happen and once the connection reestablished,

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Speaker 1: the game would reconcile the players actual position. So to

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Speaker 1: someone else it would look like your opponent had gone

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Speaker 1: invincible for a few seconds and then would suddenly teleport

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Speaker 1: to a different location. And this got to be a

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Speaker 1: real problem because people were using it to get an

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Speaker 1: unfair advantage over others. But generally these days players do

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Speaker 1: not want a High Ping rate. It makes playing the

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Speaker 1: game very difficult and if you're a really competitive player,

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Speaker 1: like you're in the elite echelons, you really want to

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Speaker 1: minimize all the external factors that could make a game harder.

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Speaker 1: You want things to be a nice level playing field

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Speaker 1: for everyone. So it really is skill versus skill, maybe

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Speaker 1: some luck thrown in, but it's not some external factor

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Speaker 1: that you have no control over. Giving one party and

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Speaker 1: advantage over the other. So you really want that Ping

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Speaker 1: to be low, and by low I'm talking about milliseconds.

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Speaker 1: Competitive gamers really want a super low ping, like if

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Speaker 1: you managed to log into a server and you find

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Speaker 1: out that Your Ping rate is fifteen milliseconds or less,

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Speaker 1: that would be amazing. It would also mean you're probably

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Speaker 1: living like a mile away from the game server and

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Speaker 1: you're connecting straight to it. A Ping between fifteen and

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Speaker 1: forty five milliseconds is really good and it's not ideal,

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Speaker 1: but it's not enough of a delay to measurably impact

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Speaker 1: the game. Between forty five and one hundred milliseconds, you

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Speaker 1: start to get into an area where the lag can

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Speaker 1: be noticeable. Not necessarily a game breaking mechanic, but you

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Speaker 1: can start to notice little issues. Between one hundred and

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Speaker 1: two hundred fifty milliseconds, you've gotten experience that can make

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Speaker 1: a game unplayable, and beyond two fifty you might as

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Speaker 1: well just disconnect and try a different server. But it

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Speaker 1: also depends on what type of game you're playing. Right

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Speaker 1: not all games are equal. If you're playing a turn

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Speaker 1: based game, that's not nearly as sensitive to paying issues,

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Speaker 1: like if one player gets to go and then the

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Speaker 1: other player gets to go and you're not simultaneously battling

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Speaker 1: um at every moment, then a little delay is not

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Speaker 1: going to be a big problem. It might make the

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Speaker 1: game play a little irritating, but it's still totally playable.

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Speaker 1: But if you're talking about a twitch based first person

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Speaker 1: shooter style game, Players Need Really Low Ping for the

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Speaker 1: game to run smoothly, particularly if you're talking about those

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Speaker 1: elite levels of play. As an example of how this

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Speaker 1: can give one player an edge over or another, imagine

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Speaker 1: a scenario in which two players are about to come

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Speaker 1: into view of each other. Both of them are going

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Speaker 1: to have line of sight to the other players, so

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Speaker 1: like they're both cresting a hill or something. But let's

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Speaker 1: say player one's Ping is much lower than player two's Ping.

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Speaker 1: That means player one has much less path latency to

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Speaker 1: the game server. That could mean that player one will

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Speaker 1: be able to see player to a moment earlier, which

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Speaker 1: can give player one an advantage in the encounter. If

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Speaker 1: you've got two players of similar skill, that could push

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Speaker 1: a fair fight into unfair territory. All right, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: take another quick break. When we come back we'll wrap

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Speaker 1: up this discussion about paying. Okay, so now we understand

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Speaker 1: that ping is a way to measure the latency between

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Speaker 1: a client machine and a server machine. You could also

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Speaker 1: do it between servers. You know, it's it's really between

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Speaker 1: any two machines that are connected on a network. But

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Speaker 1: what Affects Ping? What makes ping go from low to high? Well,

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Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, physical distance between the client and

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Speaker 1: the server is one thing that can certainly affect Ping.

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Speaker 1: The further your information needs to travel to get to

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Speaker 1: a server and then return to get to you, the

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Speaker 1: more latency you're going to encounter. That just makes sense, right.

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Speaker 1: So if you're in the United States then you're connecting

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Speaker 1: to game servers that are located in Europe, chances are

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Speaker 1: Your Ping is going to be on the higher side

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Speaker 1: compared to Europeans who are connecting to that same server.

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Speaker 1: The other big factor is the amount of traffic that's

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Speaker 1: on your personal network. Just like with roadways, more traffic

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Speaker 1: leads to congestion and it slows things down. So if

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Speaker 1: you want to jump into war zone while you're house

355
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Speaker 1: made is busy downloading a ton of four K films,

356
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Speaker 1: chances are you're paying is going to suffer because your

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Speaker 1: network bandwidth is finite. It's a limited resource. There's only

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Speaker 1: so much of it and if the game is having

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Speaker 1: to fight for some of that bandwidth compared to the

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Speaker 1: downloading of these massive files, that means you're paying is

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Speaker 1: probably going to go up as a result. For that reason,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of pro gamers out there who

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Speaker 1: will have to dedicated network connections, one just for their

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Speaker 1: gaming and the other for everything else, which to me

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Speaker 1: is crazy. But everything about pro gaming is crazy to

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Speaker 1: me because I'm a casual Gamer right I can't imagine

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Speaker 1: dedicating eight hours or more per day to playing, streaming,

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Speaker 1: you know, cutting together videos of my gameplay. That just is.

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Speaker 1: It's daunting to me anyway. Other things that can affect

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Speaker 1: paying can include the type of connection that you're using.

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Speaker 1: If you've got a hardwired connection, they go straight from

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Speaker 1: your computer to your router. That is going to Minimize

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Speaker 1: Ping on your end, at least as far as connectivity

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Speaker 1: between router and machine goes. Uh, if your housemaid is

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Speaker 1: still downloading the complete works of the fairly brothers, you're

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Speaker 1: still gonna have issues with paying. If if you're sharing

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Speaker 1: a network connection, if you're relying on Wifi. Then things

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Speaker 1: like your distance between your computer and the Wifi router

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Speaker 1: or the fact that there may be walls or ceilings

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Speaker 1: or floors between you and the router. All of that

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Speaker 1: can have an effect on paying. So general rule is

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Speaker 1: you want to be closer to the router rather than

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Speaker 1: further away, and if you can have a hardwired connection

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Speaker 1: it's better. Again, these really have more of an impact

385
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Speaker 1: at the higher levels of Gameplay. If you're a casual player,

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Speaker 1: it can still be something that might you might notice,

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Speaker 1: but it's not likely to have as critical and impact

388
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Speaker 1: on your level of play. It's also possible for there

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00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:11,240
Speaker 1: to be issues beyond your own network that you have

390
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:16,360
Speaker 1: no control over. So perhaps your Internet service providers network

391
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:20,399
Speaker 1: is having an issue, or a network that your I

392
00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:24,359
Speaker 1: s P connects to Um that might have an issue

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00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:26,600
Speaker 1: and there's not much you can do about that other

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Speaker 1: than maybe you can try and switch to a different

395
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Speaker 1: server to see if the routing between you and that

396
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,199
Speaker 1: server is better. But if it's a problem with your

397
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:39,399
Speaker 1: I s P, if it's between like if it's in

398
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Speaker 1: that last mile, there's really nothing you can do because

399
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:47,600
Speaker 1: everything is funneling through that last mile connection to your

400
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,800
Speaker 1: home and you can't step around that, at least not

401
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:55,359
Speaker 1: without somehow magically switching to a different I s p. obviously,

402
00:24:55,960 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 1: if you are reliant on something like satellite networking, then

403
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:05,960
Speaker 1: that's going to introduce enormous paying. In fact, with satellite

404
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: connectivity really aren't going to be able to compete in

405
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Speaker 1: things like first person shooters because of the latency between messages.

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Speaker 1: I mean these satellites are in outer space, so it

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Speaker 1: does take a little bit longer for the data to

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Speaker 1: get between you and the satellite then if you were using,

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Speaker 1: you know, fiber optic cable, for example, and that can

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00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 1: be enough to make it impossible for you to play

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00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:37,200
Speaker 1: the very fast paced twitch based games. You can still

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Speaker 1: play things like, uh, turn based Games, maybe even mmos

413
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,440
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But yeah, for the stuff that's

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Speaker 1: reliant on a very fast connection, uh, you really wouldn't

415
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: be able to to manage that. Anyway, that's the story

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Speaker 1: of paying. Maybe someday I'll do the story of Pong.

417
00:25:57,720 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: That was a terrible joke. Also, I have kind of

418
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,200
Speaker 1: covered the story upon when I talked about the history

419
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Speaker 1: of Arcade Games. So it was a terrible dad joke

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00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:08,199
Speaker 1: and it was moot so I apologize to each and

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Speaker 1: every one of you, but I hope you enjoyed this episode.

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Speaker 1: This look at what Ping is, where it came from,

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Speaker 1: why it has that name and what it means Um

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Speaker 1: just the one thing to keep in mind is that

425
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 1: you want the number to be low. The higher the number,

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00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:26,720
Speaker 1: the greater the latency between you and the machine when

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Speaker 1: you do speed tests on your device, like if you've

428
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:33,439
Speaker 1: ever wondered if there's an issue with your network and

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Speaker 1: you're you know, maybe things are taking a long time

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Speaker 1: to download or you're getting a lot of buffering and

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00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 1: streaming video and you do a speed test, it's essentially

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Speaker 1: a ping. Is What's going on. It's it's although there

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Speaker 1: are more involved speed tests that actually have a they

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Speaker 1: maintain a connection in order to get essentially an average

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00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: of network throughput, how how much data is being able

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Speaker 1: to pass between your computer and the network over a

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Speaker 1: given amount of time. But it's an extension of this

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Speaker 1: paying concept. Al Right, if you have suggestions for topics

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00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: I should tackle in future episodes of tech stuff, please

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00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:15,440
Speaker 1: reach out to me. One Way to do that is

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00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,639
Speaker 1: to download the I heart radio APP, navigate over to

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00:27:18,760 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: the text stuff page on that APP and Click on

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00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:24,879
Speaker 1: that little microphone icon that will let you leave a

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00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: voice message up to thirty seconds in linked for me.

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00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: Or you can pop on over to twitter and use

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00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: the handle text stuff hsw to. Send me a message

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00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text stuff

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00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,840
Speaker 1: is an I heart radio production. For more podcasts from

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00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:49,919
Speaker 1: my heart radio, visit the I heart radio APP, apple

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Speaker 1: podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.