# Two laptops, same house, same wifi network, very different pings

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-laptops-same-house-same-wifi-network-very-different-pings/755524>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 24, 2016, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-laptops-same-house-same-wifi-network-very-different-pings/755524 "2016-05-24T05:01:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-laptops-same-house-same-wifi-network-very-different-pings/755524/1 "2016-05-24T05:01:07Z")

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I just got a new laptop. It is connected to the same Wi-Fi network at my home as my old laptop. They are sitting right next to each other. But my original laptop has a ping in a game I play (Overwatch) of 20ms, while my new laptop (a much better machine in every way I know how to measure) has a ping of 200ms, which is resulting in unplayable lag.

What could be causing the difference, and how might I fix it?

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**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-laptops-same-house-same-wifi-network-very-different-pings/755524/2 "2016-05-24T05:22:49Z")

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Additional info:

“ping [google.com](http://google.com)” in the cmd line gives identical pings for the two machines.

However: [pingtest.net](http://pingtest.net) gives very different results! 20ms or so for my original laptop, 150ms or so for my new one.

I do not know what this means, and I don’t know what to do about it.

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**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-laptops-same-house-same-wifi-network-very-different-pings/755524/3 "2016-05-24T06:10:50Z")

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Disable your wireless security and retest.

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**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-laptops-same-house-same-wifi-network-very-different-pings/755524/4 "2016-05-24T06:19:02Z")

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> [@drachillix](#):
>
> Disable your wireless security and retest.

I had already gotten rid of the pre-installed McAfee but I’ll try it without Windows security as well.

(Unless I have just fixed it by getting rid of a piece of bloatware I’d missed–a game streaming app, which I have seen here and there sometimes causes high ping to happen…)