ICMP RTT measurements from Melbourne, Australia to Sydney, Australia: 9.8 ms average, 0.31 ms jitter, zero loss, ultra-low latency.

🇦🇺 Melbourne, Australia (MEL) → 🇦🇺 Sydney, Australia (SYD)

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

During the 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z ICMP echo round, 50 probes at 100 ms intervals between Melbourne and Sydney, Australia returned an average RTT of 9.8 ms, with a minimum of 9.36 ms and a maximum of 11.08 ms. Packet loss was zero and jitter was just 0.31 ms, placing the route in the Ultra-Low latency tier.

With a geodesic distance of 713.8 km, the fibre floor is 6.99 ms, so the measured average is 1.4 times that ideal and represents 71.3% fibre efficiency. The absolute spread is tiny: the standard deviation is only 0.40 ms, and the entire sample range spans less than 2 ms.

Within the 19 outbound routes measured from Melbourne, this domestic path is ranked first. Its relative RTT variability of about 4.08% is higher than the 3.28% median for the set, but the absolute numbers are so small that the route remains effectively consistent; a 0.40 ms standard deviation and zero packet loss make it a reliable domestic latency reference.

Latency Summary

Metric	Value
RTT	9.8 ms
Jitter	0.31 ms
Packet Loss	0%
Standard Fiber Floor	6.99 ms
Fiber Efficiency	71.3%
Latency Tier	Ultra-Low
Source Region	Asia Pacific
Destination Region	Asia Pacific

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 → SYD

50 ICMP echo samples at 100 ms intervals · round 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z · avg 9.8 ± 0.06 ms (SE)

Sample distribution: box = interquartile range (9.5–10.0 ms), median 9.7 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 (7.0 ms) for this route.

Full 50-sample dataset

Seq	Offset (ms)	RTT (ms)
1	0	9.48
2	100	9.44
3	200	9.39
4	300	9.36
5	400	9.55
6	500	10.19
7	600	9.99
8	700	9.85
9	800	9.56
10	900	9.66
11	1000	9.53
12	1100	9.40
13	1200	9.72
14	1300	9.49
15	1400	10.05
16	1500	9.84
17	1600	9.65
18	1700	10.67
19	1800	10.02
20	1900	9.63
21	2000	9.68
22	2100	10.92
23	2200	9.92
24	2300	9.70
25	2400	10.21
26	2500	9.87
27	2600	9.94
28	2700	10.12
29	2800	9.70
30	2900	9.46
31	3000	9.75
32	3100	10.86
33	3200	11.08
34	3300	10.00
35	3400	9.99
36	3500	9.78
37	3600	9.88
38	3700	9.60
39	3800	9.50
40	3900	9.57
41	4000	9.46
42	4100	9.41
43	4200	9.40
44	4300	9.36
45	4400	9.36
46	4500	9.80
47	4600	9.77
48	4700	9.56
49	4800	10.11
50	4900	9.77

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 Sydney (-33.86785, 151.20732). It does not disclose either facility address.

Physical Reference	Value
WGS-84 geodesic distance	713.8 km
Vacuum RTT floor	4.76 ms
Standard fiber RTT floor ( $n_g=1.4679$ )	6.99 ms
Low-latency fiber material floor	6.96 ms
Engineering floor (5% path allowance)	7.34 ms
Research 1.33× mapped-fiber reference	9.3 ms
Estimated unamplified path loss	149.9 dB
Transparent optical spans / inline amplifiers	10 / 9
Published RTT inflation over fiber floor	1.4×

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	9.36 ms
Average RTT	9.8 ms
Maximum RTT	11.08 ms
Standard deviation	0.4 ms
Stdev / average	4.1%

RTT trend

Estimated route stability across the selected time window.

Average: 9.8 ms
Minimum: 9.7 ms
Maximum: 9.9 ms
Average loss: 0.01%

Route Context

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

Reverse direction

Sydney to Melbourne latency and RTT — 9.8 ms

Fastest routes departing Melbourne (MEL)

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
Melbourne to Los Angeles latency and RTT — 148.4 ms

Fastest routes arriving at Sydney (SYD)

Singapore to Sydney latency and RTT — 94.5 ms
Tokyo to Sydney latency and RTT — 101.9 ms
Taipei to Sydney latency and RTT — 133.2 ms
Hong Kong to Sydney latency and RTT — 137.2 ms
Los Angeles to Sydney latency and RTT — 137.6 ms

Same corridor (Asia Pacific → Asia Pacific)

Hong Kong to Taipei latency and RTT — 14.7 ms
Taipei to Hong Kong latency and RTT — 15.5 ms
Singapore to Hong Kong latency and RTT — 30.8 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-syd.pings.{csv,json,yaml}. When citing, include the route, the measurement round timestamp, and the dataset version — for example: "Hats Network latency dataset, Melbourne → Sydney 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 → Sydney, Australia RTT