What can we say about the stability of the network with this information

ping

While testing network stability with ping, requests timed out before MAX-TIME-TO-WAIT for each reply.

I noted the lines that timed out before 500ms.

COMMAND>ping google.com -n 20 -w 500

Pinging google.com [<google-ip>] with 32 bytes of data: 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=55 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=55 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=55 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=55 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=55 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=55 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=55 
Request timed out. 
Request timed out. 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=117ms TTL=55
Request timed out.      <---***timed out before 500ms***
Request timed out.      <---***timed out before 500ms***
Request timed out.      <---***timed out before 500ms***
Request timed out.      <---***timed out before 500ms***
Request timed out.      <---***timed out before 500ms***
Request timed out.      <---***timed out before 500ms***
Request timed out.
Request timed out. 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=453ms TTL=55 
Reply from <google-ip>: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for <my-ip-addr>:
    Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 10, Lost = 10 (50% loss), 
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 453ms, Average = 70ms

Thank you for the edit @YLearn, and sorry for that, first ever question on this forum. About the IP addresses, I mistakenly replaced all (using <*.*.*.*>). And about the timeouts, I was keenly observing them and I am certain they all occurred in a blink, which should not happen since -w is set to 500ms, which is humanly noticable. Point taken about testing stability with ping for external networks. Now, my confusion is that what led the requests to timeout before 500 ms. Is there some mechanism by which routers in the path, nearer to the destination, can inform the source about packet loss, resulting in timeout?

Best Answer

We can say that a network with 50% packet loss is not stable at all, at least not stable enough to support healthy internet use. If your link is wireless, this is still too high a loss to be acceptable. If you use only ethernet cables then you are far above what is normal for a cabled ethernet to be acceptable.

In a short answer : Your network is not stable.

What can I infer from what you pasted ? You are using a WiFi network under far from ideal conditions. If youre using cables, you have a malfunctioning switch around (maybe faulty - dried up capacitors in its supply filtering part ?) or your connectors are too rusty. This might be caused by network cards with faulty transformers (the other symptom in this case is that the card connection icon keeps appearing and disappearing on windows - "network cable unplugged" message or something like that). You might have network cable run too long for the ethernet standard, but in that case this is your fault.

BTW, you asked about a tool to check this out. Do you know about traceroute/tracert command ?

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