[NTLUG:Discuss] Latency times on ping and traceroute

[Steve]

I was measuring the latency from home to some machines and noticed that 
if I ping an ip address, the first ping is a lot higher than the rest.

PING 64.200.143.73 (64.200.143.73): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 64.200.143.73: icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 time=95.002 ms
64 bytes from 64.200.143.73: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=58.162 ms
64 bytes from 64.200.143.73: icmp_seq=2 ttl=242 time=35.33 ms
64 bytes from 64.200.143.73: icmp_seq=3 ttl=242 time=41.114 ms

Same thing with traceroute results.

15  dllstx1wcx3-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.240.5)  125.721 ms  65.365 ms 
64.375 ms

Conversely, I was measuring latency from a college campus, and the round 
trip time ranges were much narrower on the traceroute and ping to the 
same addresses. You didn't have the 50 ping difference between the first 
and the second packet's latency.

What's with the high initial round trip time?

Steve