What Is Jitter
Jitter is the variation in latency over time. If your ping jumps from 20ms to 100ms and back, that is jitter. Low jitter means consistent latency. High jitter causes lag spikes, audio distortion in calls, and video freezing. Jitter under 10ms is excellent. Under 20ms is good. Above 30ms causes noticeable problems.
Jitter vs Latency
Latency is the average delay. Jitter is how much that delay varies. You can have low average latency but high jitter. That means your connection is fast sometimes and slow other times. Jitter is arguably more annoying than high latency because it causes unpredictable performance.
Reducing Jitter
Use wired Ethernet. Close background apps. Enable QoS on your router. Upgrade your internet plan. Use bufferbloat mitigation. Switch to a faster DNS provider with our DNS speed test. Check our bufferbloat test too.