Response time is the interval it takes for a (usually) small packet to make a round trip from one computer to/from another, usually in milleseconds (msec or sometimes just ms). Response times are especially important for interactive uses, like gaming and streaming, but they have a serious effect on all uses.

The simplest way to measure response time is to use a “ping”. In Windows, you can ping from the command prompt, using either a domain name (i.e. ibm.com) or an IP address (i.e. 199.18.59.55). You can also use service to issue pings to a destination from around the world.

One such service is check-host. If I ping my address from that service, over the YS fiber network, I get the following screen:

Note that each remote ping originator, located around the world, sent 4 pings to my ONT and received all 4 responses, with the round-trip time (rtt) listed in milliseconds. If I do the same test to my Spectrum IP address, I get the following response:

You can see that both networks are very connected to the rest of the world, with the YS fiber network showing a very slight advantage. The small difference is no doubt due to this test using very small ping packets, where the difference in bandwidth is not a major factor.