Both when it comes to surfing the Internet, making video calls or, above all, playing our favorite games online, there is a fundamental aspect that we must take into account. Not only is it enough to have a good connection, but it is also very important to control the ping. Since, the lower the latency, the better the development of our online games, without delays with respect to other players. To help us control ping, we can use a free program like PingoMeter , about which we will talk next.
When it comes to playing online over the Internet, latency or ping is something fundamental that we cannot ignore. We can define ping as the time expressed in milliseconds it takes for a request that we send to a specific server to arrive. The longer the response time, the greater the delay we will get. When it comes to playing, it is something that we can notice in strategy or action games. For example, if we play Call of Duty and we have a high ping, we will be delayed in what we see on the screen compared to other players, causing our actions to take longer to arrive, which can cause highly frustrating situations.
Check the ping from the system tray
PingoMeter is a free and open source program, which will easily show us the ping from the system tray in Windows 10, next to the clock. It is a portable program that barely consumes our system resources and is in charge of pinging a certain address continuously to show us our latency at all times.
This software is responsible for showing us some points when the ping process begins. Once the ping is successful, we will notice that a line appears on the icon in the form of a graph that represents the value of the ping. After a few seconds it is updated, and if the value changes, we will verify that the graph moves up or down, indicating the change. The program is quite discreet, offers several customization options, and is easy to configure.
With PingoMeter measure latency in real time
Once we have started the application, we will see how a new icon appears in our system tray. It shows a real-time graph that shows us the recent ping results. For this, PingoMeter takes care of using Google’s public DNS address (8.8.8.8) by default, but it is also possible to enter any other IP address. In addition, it is possible to increase or decrease the update time, as well as to set the maximum interval when performing the ping.
Depending on the ping value, the graph will be shown with a different color. Depending on the maximum ping interval that we have established, the application will tell us if we have a good (green), normal (yellow) or bad (red) latency.
Since the icon is quite small, it is likely that we will find it a bit difficult and uncomfortable to be able to correctly identify the performance of our network. If we pass the mouse icon over the icon in the system tray, we will see information about its tools that will indicate the IP address to which the ping is being done, as well as the value of the ping.
If we right-click on the PingoMeter icon located in the tray and select “Setting”, a window with three tabs will appear: “Basic”, “Advanced” and “About”.
Access your settings for customization
In the “Basic” tab we can configure the frequency with which the program should update the graph . By default, it is set to 5,000 milliseconds, which is equivalent to 5 seconds, and you can change this value to whatever we consider appropriate. In case we don’t like graphs and we prefer a numerical value, we can activate the “Numbers Mode” box and set a ping value from 0 to 99 , which will be easier to read than the graph.
In the box where it says “Graph colors and Sound effect” we can see the default colors depending on the quality of the connection . If you do not like these colors, simply select the color of each element so that an additional window appears where you can select the new color for the connection status. In the same way, we can choose a different tone for the background color, which by default is black.
We go to the “Advanced” section where we can change the IP address on which the program makes the ping and select the IP address of the server of our choice. In the “Balloon tip alarm when” section, we can enable different alarm options three times: when the ping has expired, when the connection has been lost and when the connection has been resumed.
Download PingoMeter
PingoMeter is a free and open source program that we can download directly from your space on GitHub , where we will find your available code. It is a portable application, so it does not require any type of installation . This is especially important, since it will not make modifications to the Windows Registry, and we can run it on any computer from an external storage device such as a hard drive, pendrive or memory card.
Its latest available version is 0.9.7 corresponding to November 14, 2020 , so it is quite recent and speaks highly of the support and update policy by its developers, aided by the advantages of having the program code. free form
Alternatives to PingoMeter
If we are looking for a tool with which to verify our ping or control latency of our Internet connection, we propose a couple of alternatives to PingoMeter to take into account:
vmPing
It is an open source and portable program whose objective is to check the ping of multiple connections from a single place in a simple and fast way. Just by entering the domain or IP address, the program will show us the packets sent and received, showing us the ping and informing us if the latency is minimum, medium or maximum. We can download vmPing for free from this link.
BPing
It is a simple free application that becomes an alternative to the classic Windows Ping application. This tool can be run directly from your file without having to run CMD. It is not necessary to enter an IP to ping and it allows us to scan a complete network, informing us of the IPs that are free or busy. BPing is a completely free program that we can download from its website .
