Noticed during my speed tests I have a Jitter % but I’ve never really understood what it’s representing. Even googling the term is a little hit and miss.
In: Technology
Jitter is a variation in the timing from one network packet to the next. Think
about it like cars on a road. If the cars went by perfectly evenly spaced then there would be 0% jitter. If the average time between was say 10 seconds but some came as soon as 8 seconds and others as long as 12 seconds then there would be 2 seconds jitter. Since 2 is 20% of the average (10) then there is 20% jitter. Now just replace cars on the road with data packets on the network.
Jitter generally doesn’t matter in most network communications like web browsing or email. But on streaming services like voice, the quality of the sound is related to the expected timing between the data packets carrying the voice data. If there is too much jitter disrupting that timing then the quality of the voice will be degraded.
It gets more complicated than that with algorithms to avoid / compensate for jitter and other network imperfections like latency and packet loss, but that gets above ELI-5.
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