What does jitter mean?
Jitter is the variation in latency between data packets. It tells you whether your connection is responding consistently or jumping up and down.
A connection with 25 ms ping and low jitter will usually feel smooth. The same average ping with high jitter can feel laggy because the response time keeps changing.
What is a good jitter result?
Lower is better. Jitter below 10 ms is usually excellent, 10 to 30 ms is normally acceptable, and higher jitter can cause issues with gaming, voice calls or live video.
Jitter matters most for services where timing is important, including video calls, online gaming, voice chat and remote desktop tools.
What causes high jitter?
Common causes include weak Wi-Fi, router overload, network congestion, cloud backups, poor signal quality, VPN routing and ISP issues.
Wi-Fi is a frequent cause because interference from walls, neighbouring networks and household devices can make packet timing less consistent.
How can I reduce jitter?
Try Ethernet, move closer to your router, restart the router, disconnect unused devices, pause cloud backups or large uploads, then run the speed test again.
If jitter improves on Ethernet but not Wi-Fi, the issue is probably wireless signal quality rather than the broadband line.