Reference:
Network delay - Wikipedia
Quote:
Network delay is an important design and performance characteristic of a computer network or telecommunications network. The delay of a network specifies how long it takes for a bit of data to travel across the network from one communication endpoint to another. It is typically measured in multiples or fractions of seconds. Delay may differ slightly, depending on the location of the specific pair of communicating endpoints. Engineers usually report both the maximum and average delay, and they divide the delay into several parts:
Processing delay - time it takes router to process the packet header
Queuing delay - time the packet spends in routing queues
Transmission delay - time it takes to push the packet's bits onto the link
Propagation delay - time for a signal to reach its destination
There is a certain minimum level of delay that will be experienced due to the time it takes to transmit a packet serially through a link. Onto this is added a more variable level of delay due to network congestion. IP network delays can range from just a few milliseconds to several hundred milliseconds.
Your occasional delay of 44ms is small and normal for Ethernets. In addition, each h/w device (LAN card for example) can have a different characteristic. The more devices on the LAN segment, the more of a chance for crosstalk, etc.
If you need better performance, all network engineers, not only me, will advise you to put the two devices on their own (dedicated) LAN segment. This is the only way to insure the LAN segment delay is minimal.
If you don't want to believe a network systems engineer with over 30 years IP and Internet-based networking experience (33+ to be more exact), maybe you will believe the myriad references on the Internet:
Networking 101: Primer on Latency and Bandwidth - High Performance
Browser Networking (O'Reilly)
(just one of hundreds / thousands of examples on the net which discuss this topic.)
In addition,
ping does not measure latency nor does it measure round-trip time. It measures
ICMP echo request response time. ICMP messages run with
low priority and take longer than other traffic. This means that if any single host on your network is "talking" at the same time (cross talk), your
ping packet will be delayed.
As I mentioned, 44 ms is not much delay. It is 44/1000 of second.
If you need faster times between two devices on the same LAN segment, the #1 solution is to move the devices to their own LAN segment.