Stop Believing Ping Tests Are Sufficient: Why ping tests are no longer enough for a great QoE

Are you providing Internet services, and  your customers complain about buffering screens and broken movie nights? Are you perhaps telling them that the problem might be their local WiFi, because in your own network monitoring tools, ping tests show that the video CDN was available within a few milliseconds? Of course, ping tests are, and will remain, an essential tool for basic network diagnostics. But when your customers complain about buffering, broken conferences, etc., are they still the only tool you should be reaching for? In this post, we’ll explain how modern application-layer monitoring is the key to enable a great QoE to your customers. Read on to find out more!

The Gap Between Ping Tests and User Experience

For quick tests of network health, network engineers have long relied on ICMP ping tests as a primary diagnostic tool to reveal round-trip times of a packet between two points and confirm basic connectivity. The Internet user of the 2020s doesn’t experience the Internet as a series of packets – they experience websites, streaming videos, and online services. The discrepancy between “the network looks fine” and “my Netflix keeps buffering” highlights the limitations of traditional network monitoring approaches. In other words: relying on low-level network metrics only, like ping tests are, is like checking the pulse of a patient who is complaining about a broken arm. We confirm they are alive, but we completely miss the actual injury.

In today’s web economy, ping tests fall short, because first, they measure connectivity to a single endpoint, while modern services might dynamically pull content from multiple CDN servers. Second, they measure round-trip times at the network layer, not the application performance that users actually experience. A 20ms ping to a video server tells you nothing about how the video player negotiates adaptive bitrate streams, how it handles buffering, or how it recovers from momentary network fluctuations.

And finally, they provide a single-moment snapshot, failing to capture stability under sustained load. A network that appears healthy during a quick ping test might degrade significantly under the constant demands of a two-hour prime time session.

The Complexity of Modern Streaming

Today’s streaming services employ sophisticated technologies that operate far above the simple network connectivity that ping tests measure:

Adaptive bitrate streaming constantly adjusts video quality based on available bandwidth and network conditions. These algorithms make complex decisions about quality, buffer size, and stream switching that aren’t reflected in basic connectivity tests.

Content Delivery Networks distribute video across global server networks, often routing users to different servers based on load, geographic proximity, and network conditions. While the selection of the particular CDN itself may be based on ping, your user’s OTT experience depends not just on one server’s performance but on the entire delivery ecosystem (For instance, we know that Netflix uses the Probnik tool to measure network health and make appropriate CDN selections in their frontend.).

Player buffering strategies vary widely between services and even evolve over time. Some players aggressively buffer content to prevent interruptions or maximize visual quality, while others prioritize shorter initial load times. These strategies can mask underlying network issues or, conversely, amplify small connectivity problems into noticeable quality degradation. For instance, it has recently been shown that Netflix’ player bitrate selection does not work optimally for networks like Starlink.

All these factors operate several layers above basic network connectivity, in realms that ping tests simply cannot reach.

From QoS to QoE: Measuring What Matters

The fundamental problem with ping tests and other low-level measurements is that they measure Quality of Service (QoS) metrics – technical parameters of the network – rather than Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics that reflect what users actually perceive.

A modern QoE measurement system – like Surfmeter – shifts the focus from network performance to user experience by measuring the network’s contribution to streaming quality. Unlike traditional approaches that might require subjective user surveys, today’s advanced algorithms like ITU-T P.1203 can quantify the network’s impact on streaming quality in real-time.

Consider these examples of what modern QoE measurements can reveal that ping tests cannot:

Initial Loading Delay: How long does a user wait before playback starts? A service might be reachable with excellent ping times but still deliver a frustratingly slow startup experience due to CDN selection issues or application-layer problems.

Stalling Events: Does playback freeze during streaming? Intermittent packet loss or bandwidth fluctuations might not significantly impact ping times but can cause catastrophic stalling in video streams.

Quality Switches: Does resolution constantly change during playback? Unstable network conditions can force adaptive bitrate algorithms to repeatedly switch quality levels, creating a jarring viewing experience despite acceptable average ping times.

These factors directly impact user satisfaction in ways that aren’t captured by traditional network metrics. The P.1203 algorithm translates these technical events into a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) that predicts user satisfaction on a scale of 1-5, providing a much more meaningful assessment of service quality than raw ping times. Evaluating network performance from a user’s point of view enables you to deliver better service to your customers, to fit their needs and to get a clear market-advantage among your contenders.

Proactive Monitoring: Seeing Problems Before Users Do

The true power of application-aware monitoring comes from its ability to detect problems before they become critical. Consider this real-world scenario:

A CSP observed excellent ping times to major streaming platforms across their network. Yet customers complain about impacted video quality. Using application-layer monitoring, it showed that while basic connectivity was strong, periodic congestion during peak hours was causing adaptive streaming algorithms to frequently reduce video quality. Ping tests showed minimal impact, but not at a severe level, while the streaming experience was significantly degraded.

By monitoring actual streaming performance instead of just network connectivity, providers can:

• Identify which streaming services are experiencing quality issues
• Pinpoint whether problems are region-specific or network-wide
• Determine if issues affect specific CDNs or delivery paths
• Correlate network changes with actual user experience impacts

This level of insight simply isn’t possible with traditional network monitoring approaches.

Hop on The Train: Let’s Build Upon Common Ping Tests

The ping test isn’t obsolete – it remains a valuable tool for basic network diagnostics. That’s why our platform, Surfmeter, also integrates ping tests as a foundational check for specific validation purposes. However, to assess true service quality,you require application-aware measurements that reveal what the user actually experiences.

Applications that were niche yesterday are part of your customers’ daily lives today. Remember when ten years ago, streaming was slowly overtaking common broadband TV? MS Teams, Google Meet etc. didn’t exist yet, or were still lacking. Today’s networks require monitoring solutions that understand application behavior and can measure the factors that actually determine user satisfaction. The question isn’t if the next game-changing application will arrive, but if your quality assurance is ready for it. By implementing modern, application-aware monitoring, you can finally bridge the gap between technical metrics and true user experience—and start solving problems before your customers even notice them.

To learn more about how Surfmeter can help you understand network QoS and QoE, all in one, integrated platform, get in touch with us and we’ll show you a demo!

Note: This article originally appeared on LinkedIn.