Why jitter matters
Real-time apps expect data to arrive at a steady pace. Voice and video calls buffer a tiny amount to smooth things out, and when packets arrive too unevenly they overflow that buffer, which you hear as robotic audio and freezing video. In games, high jitter shows up as characters that stutter or teleport.
What counts as good jitter?
As a guide, under 5 ms is excellent, under 15 ms is good for nearly everything, and above 30 ms will cause trouble for calls and competitive games. WiFi Ping measures jitter as the average difference between consecutive latency probes while your connection is idle.
Common causes
Jitter almost always comes from something competing for the same path.
- Wi-Fi interference and weak signal
- Other devices streaming or downloading
- Congested parts of the provider's network
- Mobile connections moving between towers
- Overloaded or old routers
How to reduce it
Connect with Ethernet if you can, or move to the 5 GHz or 6 GHz Wi-Fi band and closer to the router. Pause background transfers during calls. If jitter is high only under load, look for a router feature called Smart Queue Management (SQM).