Measuring Inter-Arrival Jitter

This jitter calculator takes a sequence of ping latencies and measures how much they vary between consecutive packets. The average jitter is the mean of the absolute differences between successive samples — the same inter-arrival definition used by real-time protocol monitoring (RFC 3550).

Latency vs Jitter

Average latency tells you how long packets take; jitter tells you how consistent that time is. A stable 30 ms connection beats a connection averaging 15 ms that spikes to 80 ms, because real-time applications can smooth a constant delay but not an erratic one.

Improving Jitter

Switch from Wi-Fi to ethernet, reduce bufferbloat with Quality-of-Service rules, close bandwidth-heavy background downloads, and prefer wired or fiber connections. The packet-loss percentage entered here rounds out the classic quality picture alongside latency and jitter.