Measured ICMP RTT from Johannesburg, South Africa to London, UK: average, jitter, packet loss and rank from the 2026-08-16 round.

🇿🇦 Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB) → 🇬🇧 London, UK (LON)

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

In the 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z measurement round, ICMP echo requests from Johannesburg to London averaged 158 ms, with a minimum of 151.59 ms, a maximum of 170.89 ms and zero packet loss across all 50 samples.

This route ranked 1st among the 19 outbound routes in the same measurement set. Its standard deviation of 4.48 ms is only 2.8% of the average, below the 3.28% median stdev-to-average ratio across that group, and jitter was 3.47 ms.

The 158 ms average is 1.78 times the theoretical fiber-floor minimum for the 9,039.3 km great-circle distance, corresponding to 56.0% fiber efficiency. With a narrow 19.3 ms min-to-max range and no loss, the route is notably stable in this round and offers a strong baseline for Johannesburg-to-London RTT.

Latency Summary

Metric	Value
RTT	158 ms
Jitter	3.47 ms
Packet Loss	0%
Standard Fiber Floor	88.52 ms
Fiber Efficiency	56%
Latency Tier	Fair
Source Region	Africa
Destination Region	Europe

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: JNB → LON

50 ICMP echo samples at 100 ms intervals · round 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z · avg 158.0 ± 0.63 ms (SE)

Sample distribution: box = interquartile range (154.5–159.8 ms), median 158.0 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 (88.5 ms) for this route.

Full 50-sample dataset

Seq	Offset (ms)	RTT (ms)
1	0	151.59
2	100	154.92
3	200	159.78
4	300	157.98
5	400	157.85
6	500	154.53
7	600	158.14
8	700	155.03
9	800	157.10
10	900	154.34
11	1000	158.09
12	1100	156.14
13	1200	153.72
14	1300	154.51
15	1400	167.58
16	1500	158.80
17	1600	158.49
18	1700	157.05
19	1800	153.68
20	1900	159.82
21	2000	164.57
22	2100	166.92
23	2200	165.08
24	2300	158.87
25	2400	155.35
26	2500	158.97
27	2600	160.41
28	2700	158.82
29	2800	154.64
30	2900	153.80
31	3000	152.89
32	3100	152.02
33	3200	153.13
34	3300	154.60
35	3400	152.88
36	3500	152.64
37	3600	152.11
38	3700	152.90
39	3800	158.54
40	3900	161.06
41	4000	170.89
42	4100	165.04
43	4200	158.85
44	4300	162.10
45	4400	158.29
46	4500	162.35
47	4600	158.98
48	4700	165.55
49	4800	156.77
50	4900	161.84

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 Johannesburg (-26.20227, 28.04363) and London (51.50853, -0.12574). It does not disclose either facility address.

Physical Reference	Value
WGS-84 geodesic distance	9,039.3 km
Vacuum RTT floor	60.3 ms
Standard fiber RTT floor ( $n_g=1.4679$ )	88.52 ms
Low-latency fiber material floor	88.16 ms
Engineering floor (5% path allowance)	92.96 ms
Research 1.33× mapped-fiber reference	117.73 ms
Estimated unamplified path loss	1898.3 dB
Transparent optical spans / inline amplifiers	119 / 118
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	151.59 ms
Average RTT	158 ms
Maximum RTT	170.89 ms
Standard deviation	4.48 ms
Stdev / average	2.8%

RTT trend

Estimated route stability across the selected time window.

Average: 158.1 ms
Minimum: 156.9 ms
Maximum: 159.4 ms
Average loss: 0.03%

Route Context

Departure PoP: Johannesburg (JNB)
Destination PoP: London (LON)
Region overview: Africa → Europe
Full global matrix: Backbone Latency Matrix
Physical methodology: Theoretical Fiber Latency

Reverse direction

London to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 179.6 ms

Fastest routes departing Johannesburg (JNB)

Johannesburg to Amsterdam latency and RTT — 163.2 ms
Johannesburg to Paris latency and RTT — 164.4 ms
Johannesburg to Frankfurt latency and RTT — 166 ms
Johannesburg to Marseille latency and RTT — 172 ms
Johannesburg to Berlin latency and RTT — 172.1 ms

Fastest routes arriving at London (LON)

Amsterdam to London latency and RTT — 5.2 ms
Paris to London latency and RTT — 6.4 ms
Frankfurt to London latency and RTT — 12.9 ms
Berlin to London latency and RTT — 15.2 ms
Marseille to London latency and RTT — 18.9 ms

Same corridor (Africa → Europe)

Johannesburg to Moscow latency and RTT — 200.7 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/jnb-lon.pings.{csv,json,yaml}. When citing, include the route, the measurement round timestamp, and the dataset version — for example: "Hats Network latency dataset, Johannesburg → London 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.

Johannesburg, South Africa → London, UK RTT