Of course it's a joke. That way you can laugh off your lack of knowledge of networking that makes people "red bar." For those who do/consistently "red bar" you need to know this describes your latency, not your speed. Think of it like this: latency/ping is how long it takes to respond to an event. Your internet/connection speed is how fast you send data once you respond. Notice your bill mentions your speed 5/10Mbit, 5/15Mbit, etc. Your latency is not in the ads on TV, your bill, or (really) in your providers control. Your speed they can (and do control). Think of your ping as how long it takes to get started sending/receiving data at your connection speed. The further the distance the longer the latency (time to get started). Car analogy: Two cars both have a top speed of 80mph. One has faster acceleration (faster ping) and can get to 80mph quicker. The other still gets up to 80mph but takes longer. In a 100 mile trip the result is the same, even though one got a jump on the other they both topped at 80mph. In online gaming (especially FPS) responsiveness matters because the game will never saturate your connection speed. All you can do is physically get closer (geographic matching). In some rare cases upgrading your connection helps, but as long as you're not on DSL you got what you got.