Round Trip Time

Seems like the further away something is the higher the ping?

Yes, the Round Trip Time (RTT), which most people call Ping because the program used to measure it via ICMP is called Ping, is dependent on the time it takes for a round trip.

Ping sends a network packet to the destination, which then sends one back. Ping then measures the time this took. It takes roughly double the amount of time to have the response arrive back than to send the packet – so RTT measures time in both directions.

peering = one ISP talking to another.


Since there's lots of routers between you and your target server, on every peering point between you and the target there's someone who needs to pay for routing packets.

The more they pay, the higher the priority.
 If they pay less, the packets might take a cheaper (slower) route.

If your ISP doesn't pay a lot to route packets to the target destination (which is reasonable the further it's away, since why should they pay for a service only a small percentage of people use?), you have a higher ping.

Signals in wires and fiber travel roughly at 2/3 the speed of light, which is about ~200.000km/s.

So to travel 200.000km you need 1s.

If your target is 8000km away¹, it takes 8/200 = 0,04s = 40ms one way. Since the distance is not travelled in a straight line, but through many cables, and every router adds about 0,2ms of RTT, let's assume there are about 20 routers and 1,5 times the distance.

That means you get 2x 40ms x1,5 + 20 x 0,2ms = 124ms of additional ping. 
The ideal ping for you would be the ping to some server near you plus those 82ms.