# Ping beacons overview

We have a core part of the i3D platform which are ping beacons. The ping beacons examine User Datagram Protocol (UDP) traffic to measure latency with a multiplayer games' UDP transport. We operate these beacons in multiple regions so that your game operates optimally. Using a ping beacon will measure the time of sending a UDP message and when you receive a response. In short, the quicker the response received, the lower the latency you have for your games.

## Why do multiplayer games use UDP versus other protocols?

User Datagram Protocol is used for multiplayer games since it allows for data transmission at a much faster rate than other protocols such as TCP.

## What is the typical flow to use ping beacons to measure latency?

Please note that you must integrate this flow using i3D SDK manually in your game clients since this is the component that sends the UDP packet towards the i3D.net ping servers. The game backend in most cases pulls the ping server list from i3D.net and passes it to the game client on start up.

1. You call the API endpoint to receive a complete list of i3D.net ping beacons.
2. Create a UDP socket.
3. Send a single UDP datagram on port 3075. The message must begin with 0xffff. **Note:** You can push other payloads in as long as it starts with 0xffff. You can add your own content.
4. Next, the ping server will reply with 0x0000.
5. From there, you can measure the time between sending the UDP message and when you receive a response.


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