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Posting
As described by Mark, "normal" ping latencies cannot be depended on for high accuracy, and when the pinged device is a network device, they often respond to ping as a low priority task (meaning latencies are often even further inaccurate). However, very high latencies to network devices may indicate congestion issues, but if there's such congestion, you'll normally also see high ping latencies to end-hosts through the network devices.
As also described by Mark, latency is best measured by IP SLA (on devices devoted for that purpose).
