ICMP round-trip times from Melbourne, Australia to Johannesburg, South Africa: latency stats, packet loss and how this intercontinental route compares.

🇦🇺 Melbourne, Australia (MEL) → 🇿🇦 Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB)

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

In the 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z measurement round, Melbourne to Johannesburg ICMP RTT averaged 405.5 ms, with a minimum of 387.75 ms and a maximum of 464.78 ms across 50 samples. The latency tier is high, but packet loss was 0 percent, so the long delay is not accompanied by probes being dropped.

This pairing ranks 19th by average RTT among the 19 outbound routes in the set, making it the slowest of the group by that measure. Its relative variation of about 4.1 percent is only moderately above the 3.28 percent median for the set, so the high latency is relatively consistent rather than erratic.

The geodesic distance of 10,347 km sets a straight-line fiber floor of 101.33 ms. At 405.5 ms, the route runs at 4.00 times that floor and achieves 25 percent fiber efficiency, a useful route-specific signal that the actual distance penalty is the dominant factor in this connection's latency profile.

Latency Summary

Metric	Value
RTT	405.5 ms
Jitter	12.98 ms
Packet Loss	0%
Standard Fiber Floor	101.33 ms
Fiber Efficiency	25%
Latency Tier	High
Source Region	Asia Pacific
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: MEL → JNB

50 ICMP echo samples at 100 ms intervals · round 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z · avg 405.5 ± 2.35 ms (SE)

Sample distribution: box = interquartile range (394.6–409.6 ms), median 400.9 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 (101.3 ms) for this route.

Full 50-sample dataset

Seq	Offset (ms)	RTT (ms)
1	0	425.25
2	100	455.79
3	200	414.80
4	300	402.23
5	400	398.04
6	500	390.25
7	600	401.58
8	700	413.78
9	800	404.28
10	900	399.42
11	1000	400.60
12	1100	394.17
13	1200	404.69
14	1300	394.53
15	1400	394.60
16	1500	396.60
17	1600	390.80
18	1700	390.62
19	1800	391.53
20	1900	415.71
21	2000	464.78
22	2100	417.15
23	2200	407.64
24	2300	400.95
25	2400	396.98
26	2500	401.22
27	2600	391.39
28	2700	388.98
29	2800	395.48
30	2900	408.69
31	3000	450.38
32	3100	421.83
33	3200	410.24
34	3300	395.98
35	3400	389.73
36	3500	390.59
37	3600	425.80
38	3700	400.30
39	3800	432.21
40	3900	406.06
41	4000	409.78
42	4100	408.34
43	4200	396.07
44	4300	401.54
45	4400	394.73
46	4500	409.11
47	4600	400.87
48	4700	400.19
49	4800	390.97
50	4900	387.75

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 Melbourne (-37.81400, 144.96332) and Johannesburg (-26.20227, 28.04363). It does not disclose either facility address.

Physical Reference	Value
WGS-84 geodesic distance	10,347 km
Vacuum RTT floor	69.03 ms
Standard fiber RTT floor ( $n_g=1.4679$ )	101.33 ms
Low-latency fiber material floor	100.92 ms
Engineering floor (5% path allowance)	106.41 ms
Research 1.33× mapped-fiber reference	134.76 ms
Estimated unamplified path loss	2172.9 dB
Transparent optical spans / inline amplifiers	136 / 135
Published RTT inflation over fiber floor	4×

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	387.75 ms
Average RTT	405.5 ms
Maximum RTT	464.78 ms
Standard deviation	16.64 ms
Stdev / average	4.1%

RTT trend

Estimated route stability across the selected time window.

Average: 406.4 ms
Minimum: 401.7 ms
Maximum: 410.0 ms
Average loss: 0.01%

Route Context

Departure PoP: Melbourne (MEL)
Destination PoP: Johannesburg (JNB)
Region overview: Asia Pacific → Africa
Full global matrix: Backbone Latency Matrix
Physical methodology: Theoretical Fiber Latency

Reverse direction

Johannesburg to Melbourne latency and RTT — 406.2 ms

Fastest routes departing Melbourne (MEL)

Melbourne to Sydney latency and RTT — 9.8 ms
Melbourne to Singapore latency and RTT — 88.4 ms
Melbourne to Tokyo latency and RTT — 112 ms
Melbourne to Hong Kong latency and RTT — 138.5 ms
Melbourne to Taipei latency and RTT — 143.2 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 (Asia Pacific → Africa)

Singapore to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 312.6 ms
Hong Kong to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 316.7 ms
Taipei to Johannesburg latency and RTT — 331 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/mel-jnb.pings.{csv,json,yaml}. When citing, include the route, the measurement round timestamp, and the dataset version — for example: "Hats Network latency dataset, Melbourne → 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.

Melbourne, Australia → Johannesburg, South Africa RTT