Standard ping, at one ping per second, is only useful for testing if a device is reachable through the network. It is not suitable for determining the quality or reliability of the network connection.

Consider a network connection with 0.5% packet loss, which is quite high. It may take hundreds of pings to detect a lost packet. If we are to fine-tune or trouble-shoot a network, we would need to repeat these tests many times. Standard ping is way too slow for this purpose.

The round-trip time reported by ping is not useful measure of network performance or quality by itself. Even a perfect high speed network can have long round-trip time simply because the distance is long. (It takes 200ms for light travel around the earth in an optical fiber.) What is important is the variation in round-trip time. For example, if you walk around your office or home with your mobile device and notice significant changes in the round-trip time, it may indicate Wifi coverage issues. If the round-trip time changes when someone is watching a 4K video over the internet, it may indicate network congestion. To observe these variation reliably, we need to ping many times, and we also need a way to visualize the result.

Fast Ping can ping up to 100 times faster than standard ping. It keeps sending out ping packets without waiting for the response. When the response come back, it matches them with the outstanding pings to determine the round-trip time. This allows Fast Ping to ping very fast even for connections with high round-trip time. With Fast Ping, a thousand pings take only 10 seconds instead of 17 minutes.

To visualize the large amount of data, Fast Ping employs real-time charts with scrolling and zooming support. Round-trip times and lost packets are instantly plotted on the chart. You can zoom out to get an overview of the data, and zoom in to examine the details. With real-time charts, you can obtain instant feedback as you fine-tuning or trouble-shooting the network. For example, as you adjust Wi-Fi antennas, reposition of your Wifi connected notebook, or replug cables into different switches, you can immediately see their effects. Fast Ping is an invaluable tool for anyone who needs to manage, optimize or trouble-shoot networks. The Fast Ping for iOS (iPhone/iPad) is available as "Fast Ping Chart" in the Apple App Store.