What is Jitter in Internet speed?

When you're in the middle of a VoIP phone call, there are few things that are as frustrating as network jitter. Jitter is one of those failures that no network administrator wants to see impacting their service. Jitter is in the same category of network performance problems as latency , latency , and packet loss .

>>>Go to the best network jitter tools<<

Before we go any further, it's useful to define these three concepts, since they appear together quite often:

jitter - fluctuations in latency speed across a network
latency - How long it takes a packet to travel from one endpoint to another
Latency - How long it takes for one packet to get from one point to another
Packet loss —failure of one or more packets to reach their destination

While network jitter affects some applications and services much more than others, jitter is a problem that needs to be addressed. In this article, we'll look at what jitter is and how you can manage jitter in an enterprise-grade network.

How to determine Wi-Fi bandwidth?

Checking the speed using the connection status (instructions)

Press the basic key combination Win+R;
In the window that appears, enter “ncpa. ...
In the list of network connections that appears, find a valid Wi-Fi connection and right-click on it;
Select “Status” and find the “Speed” parameter in the window that appears.

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What is jitter?

Jitter or packet delay dispersion is a term used to describe the variation in delay as packets are transmitted over a network . Thus, jitter is the varying rate of latency in a network and is measured in milliseconds. For example, if you have two computers communicating with each other in an office, data packets will be exchanged. On healthy networks, these packets will travel at a constant interval (approximately 10 ms latency per packet).

In a network experiencing jitter, the level of latency during transmission will fluctuate and can result in a 50ms delay in packet transmission. The end result is network congestion as devices compete for the same space . The more traffic is congested, the greater the chance of packet loss.

The image above depicts a VoIP conversation in which packets convert the sound of the user's voice and transport it to the final destination. As you can see on the left side, packets pass through the intervals without change. However, on the right side, the packaging of the packages has been broken and the end user is receiving packages out of time. This results in audio that is difficult to discern and understand.

Jitter buffers to minimize jitter

Whenever the jitter rate exceeds the acceptable jitter thresholds outlined by Cisco, it is a good idea to consider deploying a jitter buffer . A jitter buffer is a device that is used to counteract latency or latency by storing incoming packets for a short period of time before transmitting them to the end user. Jitter buffers are configured to buffer traffic for 30-200 ms before the traffic is sent to the end user.

In the context of a VoIP or video call, this would result in less jitter and a conversation that remains understandable to both parties. The jitter buffer will delay data packets before being sent in an attempt to ensure that the packets arrive in sequence . In a VoIP call, the end result is minimal jitter and interruptions in call quality.

However, it is important to note that by using a jitter buffer you will be increasing the overall latency on your network. Holding packets in a jitter buffer literally adds latency to the service. Likewise, you must be careful about configuring jitter buffers when implementing full-duplex communications. As a result, you want to test the transmission channel before deploying the jitter buffer.

The main problem with jitter buffers is that they are a solution to the banding problem. They don't address the underlying cause of the shaking, they only address the symptoms. If you want to completely eliminate network jitter, you need to delve into the heart of your router. Adding new QoS settings will allow you to start solving the root of the problem and improve your service.

Internet speed test - free SPEEDTEST

The main criterion that users focus on when choosing a provider is the quality of Internet traffic. Subscribers expect a stable, high-speed connection, allowing them to freely visit websites, use virtual services, watch videos and listen to music. But sometimes reality turns out to be far from the expectations and conditions specified in the subscription agreement. In such situations, it is necessary to conduct an Internet speed test and find out the real data transfer parameters.

But in order for the results obtained to correspond to reality, you need to follow a few simple rules related to preparing a computer or other device for verification. In addition, it is important to consider that sometimes a sharp drop in traffic is influenced by third-party factors not related to the actions of the provider. Therefore, when starting to restore communication, it is worth taking a closer look at possible problems with your PC or smartphone.

Checking Internet speed on a computer via speedtest.net

It has already been said above that checking Internet speed is extremely similar on any service, therefore, to make it easier for users to find out the result, it is worth studying all the features of the process using the example of using a speed test system. net.

It is extremely simple and will require:

Preparing computers and phones for the test deserves special attention.

To get the most accurate indicators, you need:

Compliance with the listed rules will increase the accuracy of measurements.

Internet speed test determines

After performing the speedtest Internet speed test, users receive 3 or 4 different indicators:

Additionally, the program will display the provider’s IP address, but this information does not in any way affect the reliability and level of communication.

What is the optimal Internet speed for video, Skype and games?

The optimal speed depends on the subscribers' goals. So, depending on their existing desires, users should consider that:

At the same time, most modern operators can easily provide customers with the appropriate level of connection.

Main reasons for low speed

The most important reasons affecting Internet speed test performance and the quality of website loading have already been mentioned above. They are almost completely indicated in the list of actions that need to be done to measure communication parameters:

Additionally, performance can be affected by viruses and malware that accidentally get onto your computer or smartphone.

Traffic feed rate parameters

Let's look at the optimal levels for performing certain user tasks on the network.

Download mode

It is important for ordinary Internet users who spend time on popular social networks, watch movies, and play games.

Social networks and games

For communication on social networks, 1 megabit per second is enough. For games, the input parameter is not so important. You need to pay attention to ping. For a comfortable pastime in games, the download level can still be the same - 1 Mbit/s.

Video

To watch movies or videos, you need a fairly high download speed. The exact value depends on the quality of the content. Here are a few of them:

Recoil mode

For ordinary people, outgoing indicators are not particularly important. Even the smallest value will be enough to send messages on social networks, post photos and use an email client.

For users who organize streams or those who, due to their professional activities, must download, process and send large files, the download mode is very important.

To start a stream, the minimum measurement numbers must be as follows:

Making video calls

This function deserves special attention, since both modes are important here - data reception and transmission. For video communication in Skype, the following parameters will be sufficient:

All these are approximate values that any traffic flow meter should ideally show. It is important to take into account the fact that the Internet is often not stable, there are jumps and certain dips. Accordingly, to comfortably solve the problems, it is advisable to multiply the presented parameters by two.

How does jitter affect the network?

The effect of jitter depends on the service you use. On some services, the judder won't be very noticeable, but on others, such as VoIP calls and video calls, it will be much more pronounced. Jitter has the greatest impact on real-time services such as VoIP traffic. When you talk on a VoIP phone, you are talking to another user live, and everything you hear should be crystal clear. This means that incoming audio signals must be maintained in sequence to remain understandable.

The same can't be said for file downloads, where you won't be able to tell if the jitter was caused by packets that were delayed or scrambled. For VoIP conversations, anything less than real-time signal delivery will result in a conversation with unintelligible audio signals . Gaps in audio and shaky audio signals are common due to jitter in call reception.

Why is jitter such a problem for VoIP phone calls?

Whenever network jitter is discussed, VoIP phone calls are one of the most commonly cited areas where jitter is harmful. This is primarily due to the VoIP data transmission method. When you speak in a VoIP phone your voice is converted into data that is transmitted over the Internet . Your voice is split into many different packets and then transmitted to the caller on the other end.

However, while your segmented voice data is in transit, it competes with the range of other traffic flowing through your network. All this data impacts network resources, which sometimes results in latency. This delay may not appear when the file is downloading, but when your voice travels through disorganized packets, it can lead to confusion and distortion of what you originally told the user.

In contrast, when you send an email, the packets are reassembled just before they reach the user on the other end. With VoIP calls there is no time for this and therefore your voice sounds out of order. It is for this reason that VoIP is one of the key concerns when it comes to network jitter, as it is one of the most susceptible. This is true for other real-time services too, such as video calling and video games.

One of the most common causes of jitter in VoIP services is lack of packet prioritization . If voice packets are not prioritized, then the end user will likely experience jitter. The solution is to go to the router and prioritize the packets that are sent over the network (we'll look at prioritization in more detail below).

Internet speed speed test: principle and testing mechanism

Every day, millions of people around the globe are immersed in the digital world. The Internet provides great opportunities: information exchange, viewing and downloading media files, video communication. The need to check your Internet speed online arises quite often. Slow data transfer can cause a lot of inconvenience: delays in displaying sites, long waits for downloading files from various resources, problems connecting to live broadcasts. The Speedtest.net service is designed to help the user test the quality of their Internet connection as accurately and quickly as possible. There is no need to install additional software to carry out the test. The service is completely built on the basis of lightweight plug-in technology (HTML5).

What is acceptable jitter?

While jitter is far from ideal, in many cases a slight jitter on your network won't have a noticeable impact on your communications. Sometimes abnormal fluctuations occur that have no lasting effect. In these cases, jitter is not a big problem. Cisco suggests that acceptable jitter levels or jitter tolerance levels are as follows:

Jitter below 30ms
Less than 1% packet loss
Total network latency less than 150ms

Ideally, you should try to keep jitter below 20ms for best performance. If your jitter is greater than 30ms, it will noticeably impact the quality of your real-time calls. At 30ms or higher you will start to experience distortions that will make it more difficult for the other user to understand.

In the event that your jitter, packet loss, or latency exceeds the metrics listed above, you should immediately take action to find the cause of the problem. By keeping these key metrics below thresholds, you can ensure that important services, including video and VOIP calls, do not experience major performance issues.

Global Internet connection speed test: decoding the results

Once testing is started, the user's personal computing device downloads a standard batch of fixed-size files from our service and then transfers it back. The calculation occurs by dividing the amount of information per unit of time. Let's show a simple example. Most often, transmission speed is expressed in Mbit/s. One byte is equal to eight bits, and one megabit is 125 kilobytes. This means that with a download speed of 1 Mbps, a 6 megabyte document will download in 48 seconds.

The service checks the main 4 parameters:

► Delay (ping) – shows the time in milliseconds during which it took to send a request to the server and receive a response.

► Vibration (jitter) – shows time in milliseconds, which displays fluctuations in the ping rate and the difference in delay between sent packets.

► Download – shows the output at what speed data was received from the Internet to your device. Relevant when downloading games, images, books, videos and mp3 files.

► Upload – shows the output at what speed data was transferred from your device to the Internet. The indicator of information loading is especially important when corresponding by email, social networks or instant messengers, as well as when uploading large files to servers. Typically, downloading data is slower than downloading.

How to increase the receive and transmit values?

If you feel that the speed of downloading information leaves much to be desired and you cannot complete standard tasks, it is worth taking measurements. There are many tools and special resources online for this.

If the measurement shows a significant decrease in values, first of all you need to check whether the equipment is connected correctly. The most accurate result can be obtained by connecting the cable directly to the device being used. Otherwise, the speed limit will be at least two times less than stated.

Here are some recommendations on how to increase the values for sending and receiving data:

If there is no positive result, contact your provider. He will fix the problem or offer a different tariff with a higher speed of receiving or transmitting traffic.

QoS Settings: Packet Prioritization

Packet prioritization is a type of QoS tuning in which you set priorities for certain types of traffic to reduce network congestion. . Your priority traffic will have transmission rights over other traffic types and will be sent first in any scenario. The traffic priority depends on the service you want to support. Typically, packet prioritization is reserved for those mission-critical applications that always require high performance.

To support a VoIP call and ensure the best quality, you need to ensure that any packets containing VoIP media are given priority over other traffic. You should set the data link to "high priority" so that this traffic is processed before anything else. If the data link is congested, non-priority traffic will be dropped before priority traffic.

To prioritize VoIP traffic, you can prioritize Real-Time Transport Protocol ( RTP ) packets . How to do this will depend on the design of your router. For example, on a Linksys router, you can navigate to the QoS view in the web interface. To prioritize RTP traffic, you must enter the following port numbers :

5004
5005

After a restart, RTP traffic will be more privileged than any other traffic. No matter what device you use, you want to keep your settings as simple as possible so you don't overwhelm your configurations.

Measurement parameters

Before describing the optimal traffic flow parameters for carrying out certain tasks, it is worth studying the basic concepts and designations of any standard “meter”:

Modern providers offer different tariffs. Prices depend on the speed of provision and transmission of data. In the description of each tariff, the provider indicates the maximum level of incoming speed.

Outbound is always slightly lower and is not mentioned because the rate of receiving information from the network is much more important. Loading speed is required only by those citizens who launch streams and download large amounts of information.

How to Find Jitter Using Network Monitoring Tools

Deploying a network monitoring tool is one of the best ways to monitor network jitter developments. A network monitoring tool will be able to tell you when a service is running low, and will also help you see when you have exceeded the current bandwidth limits set by your ISP.

Monitoring jitter is important because it allows you to act the moment it becomes a problem. It also gives you context about the performance issue so you can perform informed troubleshooting in the future. With the introduction of network jitter, your efforts to eliminate and prevent network jitter in the future will be more informed and effective.

In the next section, we'll look at how you can use network monitoring tools to implement QoS monitoring. By keeping an eye on performance issues such as jitter and latency, you can determine when your network is performing well and when you need to intervene.

Here are the two best tools to combat network jitter:

QoS Monitoring for Jitter: PRTG Network Monitor (FREE TRIAL)

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor offers a number of features that are very useful for jitter monitoring. The tool includes a QOS Signal Path Sensor , a One-Way QOS Sensor , a Cisco IP SLA Sensor , and, in particular, a Ping Jitter Sensor designed to measure the extent of the impact of jitter on your service. The Ping Jitter sensor sends ICMP requests to a URL to determine the statistical jitter value and execution time.

The result is shown on the dials with transparent color as shown in the picture above. This feature is useful for those who want to determine how much jitter is affecting a key service. You can also use PRTG Network Monitor to set up your own unique alerts to notify you when a service is having performance problems. In a real world environment, this helps you quickly respond to jitter when it occurs. You can try the Paessler Ping Jitter Sensor which comes bundled with the Paessler PRTG Network Monitor for a 30-day free trial.

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor with Ping Jitter Sensor Download 30-day free trial

QoS Monitoring for VoIP Phones: SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager (FREE TRIAL)

Considering that network jitter is an issue that is very problematic for VoIP calls, adopting a QoS Monitoring Solution for VoIP will help you troubleshoot to maintain this important service. Network monitoring tools such as SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager allow you to measure metrics such as jitter , latency , and packet loss that impact the ultimate performance of VoIP calls.

SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager This is a good choice because it not only monitors these metrics, but also proactively notifies you when jitter is detected. This means that you will receive an alert every time a call execution fails against any number of predefined parameters. Knowing exactly how your call is failing allows you to troubleshoot with much more information. SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager is available for a 30-day free trial for evaluation.

SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality ManagerDownload 30-day FREE trial

What is network jitter and how to prevent it?