ICMP RTT from Seattle, USA to Melbourne, Australia: average 170.1 ms, 0% packet loss, and route stability from round 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z.

🇺🇸 Seattle, USA (SEA) → 🇦🇺 Melbourne, Australia (MEL)

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

The 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z ICMP echo measurement from Seattle to Melbourne averaged 170.1 ms over 50 samples, with a minimum of 164.93 ms and a maximum of 189.47 ms. Zero packets were lost, and the standard deviation of 4.46 ms with 3.88 ms jitter indicates a steady path; the max-min spread of 24.54 ms is narrow for a route in the Fair latency tier.

At a geodesic distance of 13,166 km, the vacuum round-trip floor is 87.83 ms and the fiber floor is 128.93 ms. The observed average sits 1.32 times above the fiber floor, for a fiber efficiency of 75.8%, meaning the route carries noticeable overhead beyond the straight-line fiber path.

In the 19-route outbound context from Seattle, this path is ranked 18th. The median RTT scatter across outbound routes in the round is 3.28% of average RTT, while this route's scatter is only about 2.6% of its average, so it is steadier than the typical route even though its absolute latency is relatively high.

Latency Summary

Metric	Value
RTT	170.1 ms
Jitter	3.88 ms
Packet Loss	0%
Standard Fiber Floor	128.93 ms
Fiber Efficiency	75.8%
Latency Tier	Fair
Source Region	North America
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: SEA → MEL

50 ICMP echo samples at 100 ms intervals · round 2026-08-16T04:07:28Z · avg 170.1 ± 0.63 ms (SE)

Sample distribution: box = interquartile range (167.0–172.2 ms), median 168.6 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 (128.9 ms) for this route.

Full 50-sample dataset

Seq	Offset (ms)	RTT (ms)
1	0	175.58
2	100	170.55
3	200	166.74
4	300	169.86
5	400	167.70
6	500	165.22
7	600	167.84
8	700	168.85
9	800	178.55
10	900	172.30
11	1000	168.65
12	1100	169.94
13	1200	171.76
14	1300	173.18
15	1400	173.88
16	1500	168.06
17	1600	170.31
18	1700	171.04
19	1800	175.87
20	1900	173.00
21	2000	189.47
22	2100	173.99
23	2200	168.49
24	2300	166.04
25	2400	166.89
26	2500	166.63
27	2600	168.40
28	2700	176.18
29	2800	168.25
30	2900	166.60
31	3000	173.57
32	3100	178.77
33	3200	169.88
34	3300	166.08
35	3400	165.14
36	3500	166.81
37	3600	171.56
38	3700	167.33
39	3800	167.24
40	3900	168.00
41	4000	173.90
42	4100	168.64
43	4200	166.58
44	4300	164.93
45	4400	171.99
46	4500	167.44
47	4600	168.48
48	4700	167.98
49	4800	165.89
50	4900	164.97

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 Seattle (47.60621, -122.33207) and Melbourne (-37.81400, 144.96332). It does not disclose either facility address.

Physical Reference	Value
WGS-84 geodesic distance	13,166 km
Vacuum RTT floor	87.83 ms
Standard fiber RTT floor ( $n_g=1.4679$ )	128.93 ms
Low-latency fiber material floor	128.41 ms
Engineering floor (5% path allowance)	135.4 ms
Research 1.33× mapped-fiber reference	171.48 ms
Estimated unamplified path loss	2764.9 dB
Transparent optical spans / inline amplifiers	173 / 172
Published RTT inflation over fiber floor	1.32×

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	164.93 ms
Average RTT	170.1 ms
Maximum RTT	189.47 ms
Standard deviation	4.46 ms
Stdev / average	2.6%

RTT trend

Estimated route stability across the selected time window.

Average: 170.1 ms
Minimum: 168.4 ms
Maximum: 171.7 ms
Average loss: 0.01%

Route Context

Departure PoP: Seattle (SEA)
Destination PoP: Melbourne (MEL)
Region overview: North America → Asia Pacific
Corridor overview: North America to Asia Pacific
Full global matrix: Backbone Latency Matrix
Physical methodology: Theoretical Fiber Latency

Reverse direction

Melbourne to Seattle latency and RTT — 172.1 ms

Fastest routes departing Seattle (SEA)

Seattle to Los Angeles latency and RTT — 25.9 ms
Seattle to New York latency and RTT — 59.5 ms
Seattle to Ashburn latency and RTT — 61.5 ms
Seattle to Miami latency and RTT — 81.7 ms
Seattle to Tokyo latency and RTT — 85 ms

Fastest routes arriving at Melbourne (MEL)

Sydney to Melbourne latency and RTT — 9.8 ms
Singapore to Melbourne latency and RTT — 88.6 ms
Tokyo to Melbourne latency and RTT — 113.9 ms
Hong Kong to Melbourne latency and RTT — 138.4 ms
Taipei to Melbourne latency and RTT — 142 ms

Same corridor (North America → Asia Pacific)

Los Angeles to Tokyo latency and RTT — 101.2 ms
Seattle to Taipei latency and RTT — 114.7 ms
Seattle to Hong Kong latency and RTT — 130.4 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/sea-mel.pings.{csv,json,yaml}. When citing, include the route, the measurement round timestamp, and the dataset version — for example: "Hats Network latency dataset, Seattle → Melbourne 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.

Seattle, USA → Melbourne, Australia RTT