Round Trip Time (RTT)
Round Trip Time (RTT) is the length time it takes for a data packet to be sent to a destination plus the time it takes for an acknowledgment of that packet to be received back at the origin. The RTT between a network and server can be determined by using the ping
command.
bash
ping example.com
This will output something like:
PING example.com (216.58.194.174): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 216.58.194.174: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=25.050 ms 64 bytes from 216.58.194.174: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=23.781 ms 64 bytes from 216.58.194.174: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=24.287 ms 64 bytes from 216.58.194.174: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=34.904 ms 64 bytes from 216.58.194.174: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=26.119 ms --- google.com ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 23.781/26.828/34.904/4.114 ms
In the above example, the average round trip time is shown on the final line as 26.8ms.
See also
- Related glossary terms:
- Time to First Byte (TTFB)
- Latency