ICMP RTT measurements from Los Angeles to Seattle: average latency, packet loss, jitter, and route efficiency for the LAX-SEA path in the USA.

🇺🇸 Los Angeles, USA (LAX) → 🇺🇸 Seattle, USA (SEA)

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

In the 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z measurement round, the ICMP echo RTT from Los Angeles, USA to Seattle, USA averaged 26.9 ms over 50 samples, with a minimum of 25.5 ms and a maximum of 29.88 ms. Zero packet loss and 0.89 ms jitter place this path in the ultra-low-latency tier.

The route ranked first among the 19 routes measured from this origin in the same cycle. Its 1.13 ms standard deviation is low in absolute terms, though the corresponding relative variation of about 4.2% is slightly above the 3.28% median across the route set; the connection remains very stable at the ICMP layer.

Los Angeles is a primary US West Coast landing point for trans-Pacific cables, and Seattle is the Pacific Northwest's primary interconnection hub, so this path is more regional than intercontinental. The 1,543.6 km geodesic distance implies a fiber floor of 15.12 ms; at 26.9 ms the measured RTT is 1.78x that floor, or 56.2% fiber efficiency, leaving noticeable headroom relative to the fiber floor.

Latency Summary

Metric	Value
RTT	26.9 ms
Jitter	0.89 ms
Packet Loss	0%
Standard Fiber Floor	15.12 ms
Fiber Efficiency	56.2%
Latency Tier	Ultra-Low
Source Region	North America
Destination Region	North America

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: LAX → SEA

50 ICMP echo samples at 100 ms intervals · round 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z · avg 26.9 ± 0.16 ms (SE)

Sample distribution: box = interquartile range (26.1–27.4 ms), median 26.5 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 (15.1 ms) for this route.

Full 50-sample dataset

Seq	Offset (ms)	RTT (ms)
1	0	26.16
2	100	25.71
3	200	25.70
4	300	25.50
5	400	26.36
6	500	25.96
7	600	25.95
8	700	27.04
9	800	26.11
10	900	26.11
11	1000	27.48
12	1100	26.13
13	1200	26.33
14	1300	25.91
15	1400	26.07
16	1500	25.64
17	1600	26.55
18	1700	27.27
19	1800	26.19
20	1900	26.39
21	2000	26.96
22	2100	26.66
23	2200	26.37
24	2300	26.64
25	2400	29.46
26	2500	28.26
27	2600	26.45
28	2700	29.64
29	2800	27.40
30	2900	27.51
31	3000	29.88
32	3100	29.64
33	3200	27.99
34	3300	26.64
35	3400	26.06
36	3500	27.39
37	3600	26.37
38	3700	28.85
39	3800	27.87
40	3900	27.13
41	4000	27.15
42	4100	26.15
43	4200	26.05
44	4300	29.12
45	4400	27.08
46	4500	27.09
47	4600	26.77
48	4700	25.91
49	4800	25.96
50	4900	25.99

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 Los Angeles (34.05223, -118.24368) and Seattle (47.60621, -122.33207). It does not disclose either facility address.

Physical Reference	Value
WGS-84 geodesic distance	1,543.6 km
Vacuum RTT floor	10.3 ms
Standard fiber RTT floor ( $n_g=1.4679$ )	15.12 ms
Low-latency fiber material floor	15.06 ms
Engineering floor (5% path allowance)	15.87 ms
Research 1.33× mapped-fiber reference	20.1 ms
Estimated unamplified path loss	324.2 dB
Transparent optical spans / inline amplifiers	21 / 20
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	25.5 ms
Average RTT	26.9 ms
Maximum RTT	29.88 ms
Standard deviation	1.13 ms
Stdev / average	4.2%

RTT trend

Estimated route stability across the selected time window.

Average: 26.9 ms
Minimum: 26.6 ms
Maximum: 27.2 ms
Average loss: 0.03%

Route Context

Departure PoP: Los Angeles (LAX)
Destination PoP: Seattle (SEA)
Region overview: North America → North America
Full global matrix: Backbone Latency Matrix
Physical methodology: Theoretical Fiber Latency

Reverse direction

Seattle to Los Angeles latency and RTT — 25.9 ms

Fastest routes departing Los Angeles (LAX)

Los Angeles to Miami latency and RTT — 57.3 ms
Los Angeles to New York latency and RTT — 57.9 ms
Los Angeles to Ashburn latency and RTT — 60.4 ms
Los Angeles to Tokyo latency and RTT — 101.2 ms
Los Angeles to London latency and RTT — 129.2 ms

Fastest routes arriving at Seattle (SEA)

New York to Seattle latency and RTT — 58.7 ms
Ashburn to Seattle latency and RTT — 62.3 ms
Miami to Seattle latency and RTT — 81.9 ms
Tokyo to Seattle latency and RTT — 84.8 ms
Taipei to Seattle latency and RTT — 115.8 ms

Same corridor (North America → North America)

Ashburn to New York latency and RTT — 6 ms
New York to Ashburn latency and RTT — 6 ms
Miami to Ashburn latency and RTT — 27.3 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/lax-sea.pings.{csv,json,yaml}. When citing, include the route, the measurement round timestamp, and the dataset version — for example: "Hats Network latency dataset, Los Angeles → Seattle 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.

Los Angeles, USA → Seattle, USA RTT