Reader Contribution on Measuring Latency

Reader Craig Plunkett quickly answered my request for directions for Mac users who want to find out how long (latency) it takes requests to make round trips via their ISPs.  He also has good advice for all users on taking your own local network out of the equaltion when measuring:

"The Mac ping is found at the command line inside the terminal application in the utilities folder. The same Unix utility we all know and love. And just a nit, if you truly want to measure your ISP, you need to leave your router out of the equation, and connect directly to your customer premise device, ( cable modem, DSL modem, Wireless Ethernet Bridge ), but unless your network is really messed up, this is usually not necessary to get an accurate picture. But since we're delving into nerddom here, why not nit pick ;-)"

Thanks, Craig.

UPDATE: Reader Paul N says:

"Even easier for Mac OS is to use the Network Utility in Applications --> Utilities . It's a self contained application that includes traceroute, whois and DNS functions."

Thanks, Paul.

Note that I haven't tested either of these solutions.