Jitter is measured in milliseconds (ms).
Jitter is the time delay from when data is transmitted from one device and when it’s received at the other end.
The longer it takes data to travel to its destination the worse the experience becomes especially on real-time applications such as video conferencing, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls, streaming music and online gaming. Voice calls drop or become distorted and video lags and frames skip when jitter is too high.
Network jitter happens due to network congestion, faulty devices or route changes that cause the data to cue somewhere on the circuit (connection) and arrive our of order.
What is an acceptable level of Jitter?
Ideally, jitter should be less than 30 ms or there will be a noticeable degradation in real-time applications. The acceptable levels are:
- Jitter below 30ms
- Network latency less than 150ms
- Packet loss less than 1% of data transfer