What is Jitter ?
Jitter is the measure of the variation from packet to packet in round-trip time. This measure is calculated as the standard deviation of the individual packets’ round-trip time. Ideally, the round-trip time and latency of all packets would be identical; however, in practice, this rarely occurs. Due to other data traffic or bandwidth constraints, some packets get delayed and take longer to make the trip. This variation is jitter.
Jitter is an imperfection of a digital signal, where bits are arriving early or late from their ideal time. The two components associated with jitter are amplitude and frequency. Jitter amplitude is measured in Unit Intervals (UI); each unit interval is equal to one bit time. This is a measure of how far the bits are sliding, usually measured peak to peak. The shifting of the bit arrival time is not random. Frequency components are measured in Hertz. Lower frequency jitter is easier to follow than higher frequency jitter.
Jitter is a variation or dislocation in the pulses of a digital transmission; it may be thought of, in a way, as irregular pulses. Jitter can manifest through variations in amplitude, signal strength, and other elements of such waves. The usual causes include connection timeouts, connection time lags, data traffic congestion, and interference. Simply put, this jitter is an undesirable output of system flaws and interruptions.
Jitter is the amount of variation in latency/response time, in milliseconds. Reliable connections consistently report back the same latency over and over again. Lots of variation (or “jitter”) is an indication of problems. Jitter shows up as different symptoms, depending on the application you’re using. Web browsing is fairly resistant to jitter, but any kind of streaming media (voice, video, music) is quite suceptible to Jitter. Jitter is a symptom of other problems. It’s an indicator that there might be something else wrong. Often, this “something else” is bandwidth saturation (sometimes called congestion) – or not enough bandwidth to handle the traffic load.
Jitter can be referred to as a dislocation or variation in the pulsation of digital transmission, which would also mean an irregularity in the pulses. Jitter has the capabilities of manifesting through discrepancies in signal strength, amplitude, as well as other elements like waves. Jitter is caused by a number of factors which include; lags in connection time, connection timeouts, congestion in data traffic and interference. In simple terms, jitter is technically an undesirable production of interruptions and system flaws. For one to have an understanding of jitter, it is important to keep in mind that data (which includes pictures, text, audio or video) is rarely sent out as a whole. This data is divided into packets that are manageable with footers and headers for indicating the correct arrangement in regard to the packets of data when the turn comes for the client computer to systematize them for the playback.
