ICMP round-trip time measurements from Ashburn, USA to Johannesburg, South Africa: latency, jitter, and packet loss for the IAD-JNB route.

🇺🇸 Ashburn, USA (IAD) → 🇿🇦 Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB)

Measurement round: 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z.

The 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z ICMP echo test from Ashburn, USA to Johannesburg, South Africa returned an average RTT of 228.3 ms, with values ranging from 216.38 ms to 264.39 ms and no packet loss across 50 samples.

This route ranked 19th of the 19 routes measured in the same cycle, placing it at the high-latency end of the set. Its variability ratio of about 4.7 percent is above the network-wide median of 3.28 percent, and the 10.74 ms standard deviation and 7.98 ms jitter underline a path that is more dispersed than the average route in the set and consistent with the Fair latency tier.

The 13,082 km great-circle distance gives a vacuum floor of 87.27 ms and a practical fiber floor of 128.11 ms. At 1.78 times that fiber floor, the route's 56.1 percent fiber efficiency shows a wide gap to the physical optimum, so operators should expect peak RTTs near the observed 264 ms upper bound during comparable measurement windows.

Latency Summary

Metric	Value
RTT	228.3 ms
Jitter	7.98 ms
Packet Loss	0%
Standard Fiber Floor	128.11 ms
Fiber Efficiency	56.1%
Latency Tier	Fair
Source Region	North America
Destination Region	Africa

Ping Measurement Series

The chart below renders the 50-sample ICMP echo measurement round for this route; an accessible table of every sample is included with the chart.

Ping series: IAD → JNB

50 ICMP echo samples at 100 ms intervals · round 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z · avg 228.3 ± 1.52 ms (SE)

Sample distribution: box = interquartile range (220.7–232.2 ms), median 225.5 ms · whiskers = min–max · diamond = round average · each dot is one measured sample.

How to read this chart

The shaded band spans the measured minimum to maximum RTT of all samples collected up to that point, and the thin line traces the running average. The final position therefore matches the round statistics exactly — the band only widens when a new extreme sample arrives.

The dashed line is the round average, and the shaded band at the bottom is the theoretical fiber-optic floor (128.1 ms) for this route.

Full 50-sample dataset

Seq	Offset (ms)	RTT (ms)
1	0	252.93
2	100	231.96
3	200	223.52
4	300	220.98
5	400	225.72
6	500	227.30
7	600	220.53
8	700	220.05
9	800	248.76
10	900	244.54
11	1000	225.44
12	1100	221.75
13	1200	220.57
14	1300	224.22
15	1400	230.57
16	1500	220.47
17	1600	220.23
18	1700	224.66
19	1800	263.44
20	1900	235.63
21	2000	228.10
22	2100	227.62
23	2200	225.59
24	2300	220.08
25	2400	220.97
26	2500	221.34
27	2600	218.71
28	2700	217.10
29	2800	216.38
30	2900	218.36
31	3000	229.29
32	3100	235.51
33	3200	234.97
34	3300	232.72
35	3400	223.53
36	3500	232.23
37	3600	230.43
38	3700	225.70
39	3800	218.66
40	3900	240.98
41	4000	232.62
42	4100	228.05
43	4200	225.58
44	4300	218.72
45	4400	219.52
46	4500	235.27
47	4600	223.02
48	4700	224.95
49	4800	221.34
50	4900	264.39

Download This Route's Data

This route's measurement round is published as open data (CC BY 4.0) in CSV, JSON, and YAML. See About This Measurement for citation guidance.

Download this dataset

Per-route ICMP ping series, released under CC BY 4.0. Uncompressed plain text — no decompression step needed.

CSV JSON YAML Full dataset

Theoretical Fiber Latency

The public physical reference uses the GeoNames city centres for Ashburn (39.04372, -77.48749) and Johannesburg (-26.20227, 28.04363). It does not disclose either facility address.

Physical Reference	Value
WGS-84 geodesic distance	13,082 km
Vacuum RTT floor	87.27 ms
Standard fiber RTT floor ( $n_g=1.4679$ )	128.11 ms
Low-latency fiber material floor	127.59 ms
Engineering floor (5% path allowance)	134.53 ms
Research 1.33× mapped-fiber reference	170.38 ms
Estimated unamplified path loss	2747.2 dB
Transparent optical spans / inline amplifiers	172 / 171
Published RTT inflation over fiber floor	1.78×

Attenuation is used to estimate the number of 80 km optical spans; it does not directly slow light. See the full theoretical fiber latency, GeoNames, attenuation, and amplifier methodology.

Stability & Trend

The current measurement round (2026-08-16T04:07:28Z) collected 50 ICMP echo samples on this route. Distribution statistics from that round:

Round Statistic	Value
Minimum RTT	216.38 ms
Average RTT	228.3 ms
Maximum RTT	264.39 ms
Standard deviation	10.74 ms
Stdev / average	4.7%

RTT trend

Estimated route stability across the selected time window.

Average: 228.0 ms
Minimum: 226.5 ms
Maximum: 229.9 ms
Average loss: 0.01%

Route Context

Departure PoP: Ashburn (IAD)
Destination PoP: Johannesburg (JNB)
Region overview: North America → Africa
Full global matrix: Backbone Latency Matrix
Physical methodology: Theoretical Fiber Latency

Reverse direction

Johannesburg to Ashburn latency and RTT — 229 ms

Fastest routes departing Ashburn (IAD)

Ashburn to New York latency and RTT — 6 ms
Ashburn to Miami latency and RTT — 27.4 ms
Ashburn to Los Angeles latency and RTT — 60.7 ms
Ashburn to Seattle latency and RTT — 62.3 ms
Ashburn to London latency and RTT — 70.3 ms

Fastest routes arriving at Johannesburg (JNB)

Amsterdam to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 171.9 ms
Berlin to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 172.1 ms
London to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 179.6 ms
Paris to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 180.9 ms
Frankfurt to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 188.4 ms

Same corridor (North America → Africa)

New York to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 221.5 ms
Miami to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 259.8 ms
Seattle to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 282.1 ms

About This Measurement

Published RTT reflects best-case backbone path behavior measured with ICMP echo probes between PoPs. End-user latency also depends on local access networks, congestion, routing policy, and traffic engineering. None of these values is an SLA.

The measurement round behind this page is published as open data under CC BY 4.0 in the Hats Network latency dataset. Per-pair files are available at /opendata/latency/latest/pairs/iad-jnb.pings.{csv,json,yaml}. When citing, include the route, the measurement round timestamp, and the dataset version — for example: "Hats Network latency dataset, Ashburn → Johannesburg round 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z, CC BY 4.0".

Data auto-generated on August 16, 2026. Explore the full interactive latency matrix or browse more city-pair routes.

Ashburn, USA → Johannesburg, South Africa RTT