how is it possible

[DSD27]

I have a desktop for several years, that always gives me 28 ping in the speedtest, connected to the router thorough cable. There are two smartphones here at home that also get 28 ping, through wireless. Then I have a 10 year old laptop (asus notebook) that gets 16 ping doing the exact same test, using the same wireless network as the smartphones. I suspect there might be some glitch somewhere with the laptop, or is this possible?

[Alex Atkin UK]

Consistently?  Because if its speedtest.net then you won't necessarily be testing against the same server every time, thus a variance in ping is expected.  I've often found the server with the most bandwidth capacity (thus what I'm allocated) is not necessarily the lowest ping.

 

When testing latency, you're better off pinging the first hop inside your ISP though even then its not exactly conclusive as routers often treat ping traffic as a low priority.

[DSD27]

7 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Consistently?

Yes, over months/years. Always the same server.

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 minutes ago, DSD27 said:

Yes, over months/years. Always the same server.

If its latency you're specifically looking at, I'd be looking at pinging your own router (to see if there's a difference within the home) and maybe pinging Google DNS servers such as 8.8.8.8, as this way you know what you are measuring is reasonably consistent.  I don't really trust speed tests for latency as how the specific browser is behaving can make a difference.  For example, I have a HTML speed test hosted locally on my LAN and the latency measurements on that are completely wrong compared to manually measuring via ping.