Jitter

Meaning

Jitter is the variation in latency from moment to moment. Even if the average delay is small, delays that swing up and down can make voice and video calls break up, because the pieces of data arrive unevenly. It matters more for live calls and games than for ordinary browsing or downloads. Speed-test tools may list it beside ping. If calls keep stuttering, note the jitter and packet loss figures from several tests, because a provider's support team may ask for them. See also: Latency, Packet loss, and the guide What Mbps Means: Download Speed, Upload Speed and Latency.